


This Last Golden Age

by dweebulous



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M, Marauders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-01-15 08:29:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 27,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1298257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dweebulous/pseuds/dweebulous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years, four seasons, four boys. A multi-chapter fic about the marauders' last years at school. As their days at Hogwarts end, the wizarding war begins. </p><p>Updates on Thursdays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Autumn, Fourth Year (Remus)

_Autumn, fourth year_

Remus turned the maple leaf over, laid it across the pages of his open book, and traced his finger along its delicate splay of sunset-colored veins. Ever since he was very young, he’d appreciated the symmetry of things. Now, he was satisfied with the even margins of his charms book, the neat organization of his notes lined so carefully on his parchment, the way each peak of the wide leaf mirrored another one on the opposite of the stem.  


It probably had something to do with the asymmetry of his own body—the disgust he felt at his uneven scars and oddly shaped bruises. As much as his friends tried, they could never understand the fear that came with each new scar, the increased necessity of hiding in plain sight.  


The late September sun was still warm enough that he could just wear worn grey corduroys and a flannel shirt—inherited from James and rolled up to his elbows. Soon, it would be too cold to study under a tree while his friends played in the leaf pile fifty meters away: Sirius hollering as he threw a handful of leaves, Peter kicking through the pile in his typical clumsy way. But Remus had to study, had to get these essay notes down. One week to the moon; he could feel it waxing in his bones. He had to work hard, to get ahead.  


He underlined another sentence, then glanced up to where James, Sirius and Peter threw leaves like handfuls of flames. They were on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, dappled with the sunlight that slanted through the trees. Sirius had tackled Peter, and James was doing his best to shove handfuls of leaves into the howling boy’s trousers.  


There was a pleasure in the symmetry of the marauders, too—the four of them both compliments and foils. But watching the three of them knotted his stomach in an unpleasant reminder. James and Sirius had talked big ever since McGonagall first awed the Transfiguration third-years with her smooth cat transformation, but Remus had little faith in their success. Thirteen year old boys couldn’t master animagus transformations on their own—it wasn’t just foolish, it was dangerous. And he was ashamed, too, that some part of him wanted so badly for them to succeed, so that maybe he wouldn’t be quite so alone when the moon pulled him under.  


Then again, maybe it was just a phase they’d pass through. He found notes littering the dormitory occasionally—passages copied from complicated spell books, or a frightening diagram of a man turning into a baboon—but it seemed just one of the many whims they obsessed over and then abandoned. He was grateful for their efforts, but there would always be things they did not understand, places they could not follow.  


He laughed at Peter’s futile escape attempts, then forced his attention back to his textbook. Only minutes passed, however, until a long shadow fell over the passage he was trying to comprehend.  


“All work and no play, Remus,” Sirius tsk-ed as he folded down next to him.  


“I could say the opposite to you,” he said.  


“But all this playing gives me my youthful glow!” Sirius rolled onto his back and stretched his arms above his head, letting his sweater ride up to reveal a few inches of pale stomach. “These are our golden days, Lupin. Do you want to waste them groping some dusty old literary maiden, or do you want to grab life by the tits?”  


Remus laughed in spite of himself. He snapped the book shut with a little grimace; four years’ experience had already taught him that no studying could be achieved when Sirius was around.  


“You’re so frustrating,” he accused. “Top of the class without even trying.”  


“I’m number three or four,” Sirius smoothly replied. “If I actually tried, I’d probably be headmaster.”  


“Chief warlock of the Wizengamot.”  


“Junior Minister of Magic, at least.”  


Remus spread out next to him, stretching his lanky teenage limbs. Over the summer, he’d shot up three inches. It seemed every boy in their dormitory had come stretched out and foreign on the other end of the holiday (except Peter, who still clung to his roundness). Remus was surprised to feel so out-of-balance with these natural changes; he was constantly stumbling on stair steps or tripping on rugs, making him even more out-of-odds with Sirius’s catlike grace and James’s natural athleticism. He worried privately that in the symmetry of their group, James and Sirius were clearly paired together, with their dark hair and handsome features, like brothers or at least cousins. That left him with Peter. He liked Peter a lot—the boy was funny and fiercely loyal—but life with Hogwarts’ two golden boys had established a sort of stinging insecurity that he never talked about but never fully forgot.  


“I found another secret passage, I reckon,” Sirius turned to mutter into Remus’s ear. “Don’t tell James or Pete yet. They chafed me for months on that last false lead…” Last term, Sirius had been convinced that a third corridor tapestry of an incredibly hairy witch had been a cover for a hidden hallway. He’d insisted that you had to charge, full-tilt, into the panel to be allowed inside. In the end, he’d ended sprawled on the floor with a nasty bump on his head and an even worse one on his ego as James, Peter and Remus doubled up in laughter. “I was giving a grope to that ugly witch statue by the dungeon, and I’m pretty sure her hump’s hollow.”  


“I know which one you’re… wait… you were groping it?”  


He just shrugged and reached out to grab Remus’s parchment, holding it above his head to cast a shadow over his sharp features. “The incendio spell is best cast in the early morning, when it gains the strength of the morning sun,” he read in a deep, dramatic baritone. “I am a bloody boring wanker, and I need to get laid or beat up or maybe both at once.”  


“Oh, charming, I see you’ve come to my thesis,” Remus reached out to snatch his parchment back, then carefully rolled it up and tied it with a bit of string he’d looped around his wrist. “I don’t suppose you’ve started your essay yet?”  


“I’ll do it tomorrow,” he shrugged.  


“It’s due tomorrow!”  


“Precisely.” Without even seeming to sit up, Sirius was on his feet. He had a way of moving from one position to the next without any of the intermediate steps, so that he might switch from running to lying down in a matter of seconds, or spring up from studying into a full-out sprint without consideration or explanation. He was, in short, hard to keep up with. “Come on, Remus, you must have fun with us right now or you will ruin everyone’s entire day.”  


“I’m sure everyone’s day will get on fine without me,” Remus argued, though a slight color was rising on his neck. It was nice to be singled out, to be needed.  


“If you sit here moping under this tree for one more minute, James and Peter will start to cry!” He pointed accusingly at the two boys, who were both pointing their wands at a small pile of leaves and sticks. “Look at them, they’ve gone mad, they think you turned into a pile of rubbish and they can curse you into being a bit of fun!”  


At that moment, a spark lit from each of their wands, and the little pile went up in flames.  


“Oy!” Remus jumped to his feet and clambered after Sirius, who was already halfway to the forest’s edge. “You two will get in such trouble, if any prefect’s out—“  


“—Bloody brilliant, can’t believe you didn’t wait for me, did you use incendio?”  


“—get us all expelled, we should be in the castle studying—what if you caught the entire forest on fire?”  


James and Peter danced around their small bonfire, letting out war cries and curses. When he reached them, Sirius flung an arm around each of their necks, jostling them both until they raised their arms in protest.  


Remus patted the front of his robe for his wand, but before he could even slip his hand into his pocket three bodies crashed into his own.  


“We were practicing, Lupin!”  


“Just a bit of fun!”  


“Come sit by the fire, it’s nice and warm.”  


Sirius sprawled across his stomach, James pinned his shoulders, and Peter flung himself across his weakly kicking feet. What was there to do but surrender?  


Only when they were convinced Remus would make no move to stifle their fire did the three boys relinquish their hold on him. They surrounded the little ball of flame—Peter’s eyes bright with achievement, Sirius with a mischievous grin, James with the cool arrogance of someone not surprised by his success or worried about getting into trouble, and Remus with a sort of nervous, glancing-about grimace that would have sucked all of the fun out of the rule breaking if not for his lopsided grin. The sky crisp, unrelenting blue; the trees in the forest ablaze with changing foliage. His books abandoned under the tree. An owl circled overhead, nothing more than a silhouette against the bright autumn sky. The air was just chill enough for the fire to be a welcome heat, and the four boys bent over it, linking their arms over one another’s shoulders as the smoke trickled up into their hair.  


For the rest of the week, even after he’d showered and changed clothes and slept, Remus would smell that fire on his skin. He’d inhale deeply in the morning, when it took all of his bravery and strength just to get out of bed and face the aches and pains and fears the approaching moon brought. He’d breath in the scent on fire and smoke and mischief and friendship, and he’d remind himself that everything was going to be alright.


	2. Winter, Fourth Year (James)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Locked in the castle for the winter months, James deals with his imprisonment by dreaming up some new schemes.

James paced the corridor like a caged animal. He rubbed his hands up over his hair, pushed his glasses to the top of his head, took his cardigan off, wiped his glasses on the edge of his shirt, put his cardigan back on. He flicked his wand to straighten his trunk. He flicked his wand to upset his pile of laundry. He flicked his wand to turn the lights on, off, on—

“James!” As Remus whirled from his desk, he splattered his parchment with ink from his quill. “Bloody hell!” 

James turned with wide eyes, as if he’d forgotten that someone else was in the room. “Oy,” he pressed a hand dramatically to his forehead. “Sorry, mate. I’m just a bit…” 

“Crazed? Manic? A-fucking-noying?” 

“You’ve been spending too much time with Sirius,” James countered, perching on the edge of his bed. 

“I’ve been spending too much time studying for midterms,” Remus sighed, turning back around to hunch over his desk. 

“I can’t study anymore,” James moaned, flopping backwards onto his mattress. “I can’t read any more textbooks, I can’t practice any more spells. My spirit is broken, Remus. I’m done, spent, finished, dead.” 

“The dead can’t stomp around the dormitory. The dead can’t piss and moan all winter long.” 

“The living dead, then,” James muttered before rolling onto his stomach and letting out a strangled groan. 

“You think you sounded like a proper Inferi there,” Remus twisted to address the body flopped across the four-poster bed. “But you actually sound like a Niffler being trod upon.” 

James laughed. At least tormenting Remus made him feel a little bit calmer, a bit less like ants were crawling on his skin. His true problem was very simple—he was a fourteen year old boy. A fourteen year old boy accustomed to Quidditch practice and rowdy outdoor afternoons, to evenings spent sneaking out of the castle to explore the edge of the forest. James was extraordinary in many ways, but he was also very typical, which meant he was just as hyperactive, contrary, easily distracted and sexually frustrated as any fourteen year-old wizard subpoenaed to the castle for the long winter months. This boredom manifested itself in the particular brand of twisted humor and cruelties that makes up the reservoir of his teenage unconscious. 

Remus turned back to his essay. Just when James opened his mouth to send a new round of annoyances swarming through the room like a cloud of gnats, the door burst open with a spectacular bang. A door swinging open so dramatically and violently could only prelude one entry: Sirius Black. 

The boy swept in with his usual flair, sweeping his cloak from the floor like a stereotypical vampire to hide the lower half of his face. “Jamesssss,” he seethed. “I’ve come to suck ya bloooood.” 

Remus groaned and snapped his book shut. “We should have never gone to that muggle cinema,” he rolled his eyes as he packed his satchel. “I’m going to the library. Try not to tear the castle down before I get back. Or before spring thaw. Whichever comes first.” 

It was unclear if James and Sirius were listening, because they were both collapsed on James’s mattress, rolling themselves up in the bed sheets and mimicking the monster movie marathon they’d all attended over the last summer, when Remus had insisted a true Muggle experience would help them grow more cultured. 

“What have you been up to, you great, sorry lump?” Sirius propped himself up on James’s pillow, stretching his body out over the tousled sheets. Most boys would have qualms with stretching on the same bed, which was perhaps a spectacular element of the two boys’ friendship. They were not ashamed of their masculine affection, or embarrassed by physical contact. There was nothing sexual in their wrestling or tussling, or in the innocence of laying side-by-side on a twin mattress. They were both handsome, affluent and cocky enough to not worry about other people’s perceptions, and because they held no concern in outer opinions no real rumors stuck. 

James found a deeper comfort than he could ever quite put into words with this brotherhood he’d forged with the thin-faced, pouty almost-Slytherin. They were all four products of lonely childhoods—Sirius as the Black sheep, literally; Peter awkward and chubby and rather disliked; himself the spoiled only child of overprotected parents; Remus with his distant, guilt-racked parents and the secrets that greyed his hair and prematurely bent his spine. They had all been alone, and they had all found each other. James could not sense all this now, with his concerns of teenage girls and irrational pranks, but one day he would recognize what they had all needed, and what they had all provided. 

Now, he only knew it was very fun to lay twisted on his mattress with Sirius, his head flopping off the edge and his glasses just barely clinging to the slope of his nose. Upside-down, the room took on a new look—the neat corner of Remus’s desk, with his academic charts and schedules pinned carefully to the wall; Peter’s two-week pile of dirty socks and sweaters; the yellowing poster of a Muggle girl Sirius had saved from a secondhand bookstore and sloppily taped up above his trunk. It felt good to talk about what a dodgy git Lucius Malfoy had been this week, and how high Dorcas Meadowes hiked her skirt yesterday, and whether or not a Bat Bogey hex in conjunction with Riktumsempra could possibly suffocate an unlucky recipient (in this hypothetical case, Severus Snape). 

“The problem with the wintertime,” James drawled, forcing himself into a sitting position and wincing at his sudden spell of dizziness. “Is that there is absolutely nothing worthwhile to do, except prepare for Christmas.” 

Sirius grunted his assent. “By ‘prepare for Christmas’ I hope you mean eye the catalogues for what our dear mothers can buy us.” James laughed his agreement. That was what made their friendship so easy—with all their differences, they were mirrors of each other. Both from wealthy families, both handsome, both accustomed to getting what they wanted. They were both far too clever for their own goods, and neither had ever put their full effort into a project. When James spent too much time with Remus, he could feel shallow or spoiled. When he was with Sirius, he never felt the urge to hide his more selfish aspects. 

“I think I need a new hobby,” he admitted. 

“Something other than having wet dreams about Evans?” 

“Shut up!” There was a scuffle, a tangle of bedclothes, and his pillow was pressed firmly over Sirius’s head just long enough for the boy to grow red-cheeked and disheveled. 

“Have you been working on the Zoological Society project?” Sirius asked, breathless. The ZSP, as they called it among company, was the one thing they took seriously. It was the perfect plan—to learn how to transform into spectacular animals, to give this gift to Remus, who was too shy and too proud to accept any of the physical gifts they tried to share. The plan was just ridiculous enough to be fun, and just too dangerous to be irresistable. 

“I’ve done some more research,” James said. “I looked up some of the worst side effects. They aren’t very pretty.” 

“Well, now that you’ve seen them, you won’t be stupid enough to make them,” Sirius pointed out. 

“It’s pretty dangerous, Sirius.” He was sober now. “People get mutilated, they die. That’s why the Ministry monitors so close.” 

“Who are you, Remus?” Sirius taunted. “That’s why we haven’t let him know how much we’ve been studying. He’ll just discourage us unless we’ve almost got it, anyway. Don’t let that little Remus in your conscience get you down!” 

“Without that little Remus, we’d all be dead.” 

“Touché.” 

A long silence stretched across the room, but now that James wasn’t bored alone, it seemed a bit more bearable. 

“I really think we can do it, James,” Sirius said soberly. “I’m not joking, and I’m not dreaming. If you know the theory well enough, you can control the transfiguration. Once you memorize the theory, the act itself is easy.” 

James scoffed. “But this isn’t a grade one Charms lesson, Sirius! If you mess up your first attempt, you can seriously mess yourself up.” 

“James.” Sirius rolled onto his side to look his best friend in the eye. “James, we can do this.” 

They were both silent. An understanding passed between them—not that they could do this, that they would do this. 

“Come on, James, admit it. We’re the most handsome, intelligent bastards to ever grace the magical sphere.” 

Then they were both laughing, and thwopping pillows into each other’s faces, and further discussing ignorant theories of how to seduce sixth-year girls. 

So this great quest, this impossible feat, was reduced to laughs. That was, in the end, how they achieved most things. They took nothing seriously, so nothing mattered. They dismissed serious business, because they were teenage boys, and they were happy, and they were safe. 

When their laughter was stifled and their energy spent, Sirius turned towards James and raised his eyebrows. “Remus was saying something the other day about staying organized, and he gave me an idea…” 

“Wait, Remus, organization, you?” James interrupted. “Something’s wrong.” 

“No, no, just listen, okay? I have this idea…” His eyes lit up in the way they always did as he revealed a grand idea. “I have this idea… for a map…”


	3. Spring, Fourth Year (Sirius)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius had been losing things all year long: A single dragon skin glove, a set of pewter scales, his raven feather quill. Now, he lost his virginity in the crowded broom closet,

Sirius was a heartbreaker. 

In the last six months, he’d gone from a handsome child into a teenage Adonis. The girls of Hogwarts took note. 

It was more than his thin, dark lips and slanted brows, more than his pale skin and the hair he kept rebelliously long, tied back with a spare bit of string. It was in his walk—his swagger. It was in his talk—cocky and sardonic, edged with just a hint of cruelty. It was in his stare, a certain look he’d perfected to be more effective than a heavy dose of Amortentia—a lowering of his brows, a smirk of his lips, a slight leaning-forward that almost always ended in a lip lock with any girl blessed to be close enough to him at that moment. 

The coming spring renewed his confidence in himself—and because that confidence had never died, had never even faltered, it just made him twice as insufferable. He could feel the admiring eyes on him when he lounged by the lake with Pete, shooting sparks at the prying tentacles of the giant squid. He could feel the looks when he went out on the tennis pitch to toss Muggle golf balls to James, wearing a t-shirt to show off his newly muscled arms though the air was still cold enough to raise goose bumps on his bare skin. 

Something people did not often recognize about Sirius, with his swagger and big talk and need to constantly twirl in the center of attention, was that he also appreciated time spent alone. Needed it, in fact. He saved it for secret times—very late at night when he could sneak from the dormitory to prowl the sleeping castle, or early in the afternoon directly after class when he could escape by the edge of the woods for a quiet half an hour. He couldn’t explain why he needed this time to himself. It wasn’t that he necessarily organized his thoughts—they were just as erratic as ever. But if he let them relish in their chaos, occasionally one would flitter through his mind and stick, like the memory of a sparrow’s shadow across a backlit curtain. He’d had most of his grand inspirations on his own—the idea for the map, especially, which he and James had labored over all winter long, and which still contained years of work. It was a complicated project, but it had the promise of a magnum opus. They already had pages of wild notes, whole rolls of parchment filled with spell equations and geographic inspiration. Once they got their wild ideas all down in permanent ink, they would bring the plan to Remus—he would submit his own cool logic—and Peter—who could provide his own overexcited perspective (often surprisingly astute). 

Today, he’d skipped off on Divination in order to stroll through the castle at his own leisure. It was one of those perfect days that drew students outside like moths to a flickering candle flame—desperate to soak up warmth and light while it was available—and it meant the daytime corridors were free for him to claim as his own. He strolled along with an oddly serious look on his face, hands in his pockets, lips pressed into a sober line. So wrapped up in possibilities for the map that he might not have seen the tall blond girl at all if she hadn’t stuck a manicured hand in his path to stop him. 

“You’d best be careful out here, Black. Animosity’s running high between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. Someone might shove you in a cabinet before Saturday’s match.” 

He was annoyed, for an instant, at the interruption in his thought process. Then he took the time to look the girl up and down—her Ravenclaw blazer just a bit too tight, her skirt rolled two or three times to reveal just a bit too much thigh. Ernestina Green, the Ravenclaw seeker, a girl able to transform from blood-splattered and bruised on the Pitch to coiffed and manicured in the hallways. A sixth year. With a reputation. Who happened to be eyeing him just now. 

“I can fight them off,” Sirius shrugged, still a bit off-balance. He hadn’t expected her, so it took some effort to muster his usual lackadaisical charm. “I’ve got the strength of ten Hippogriffs, and the stamina of fifteen.” He grinned, mostly to himself—James would have appreciated that line, and he made a mental note to tell him later. 

“Maybe we can form a truce for an afternoon?” Ernestina asked him with a raised brow. 

“I’m not sure if my fellow Gryffindors can stand it.” 

“They don’t have to know everything.” 

“No, they don’t…” 

Conversation was not too sparkling after that, mostly handfuls of innuendo leading to a broom closet. Sirius enjoyed pretty girls in a thoroughly uncreative way. He liked the most predictable ones, whose attractions held nothing of real interest. Pouting lips, long hair, personalities obstructed by giggles. It was easier to take advantage of them. It was easier to forget them. 

But Ernestina surprised him. Maybe it was her age that set him off balance, or maybe it was her confidence. She knew what she wanted from him, and she was not afraid to guide—to demand—and before he could even really fathom what was happening she was wrapped around him, she was moving too fast, he was following, acquiescing, and he was startled by the sudden plummet in his stomach, the sharp ache behind his eyes, his desire for everything to end quickly so he could escape back out into the hallway, to daydreams of maps. 

He had been losing things all year long, it seemed. A single dragon skin glove, a set of pewter scales, his raven feather quill. In September, he lost his inhibitions as he streaked across the Quidditch Pitch, illiciting gasps from the crowd and a string of merciless detentions from a livid McGonagall ( _“Shame on your house, how can you show your face in this common room, a stain on the Gryffindor name"_ —a remarkable inversion of his mother). In December, he lost his last shred of respect for his father when the man backhanded him across the Christmas dinner table (not that it was the first time he’d received a backhand before the pudding course, but the first time he felt the violence was enacted not for what he’d done, but who he was). Now, he lost his virginity in the crowded broom closet, wrapped in the smell of wood polish, dust, something cloying and feminine that turned his inexperienced stomach. He was horrified by the act itself—the pure biological thrust, the letting-go of animal urges. The violence, the messiness, the noises. But he is horrified most by the moment after, in the dark and stretching quiet as he watched Ernestina’s silhouette straighten its clothes. She leaned in to kiss him a final time and whispered “You’d have made a fine Slytherin,” against his mouth. 

He stood frozen in the dark after she left, eyes trained on the spider that twirled in a bit of web illuminated by the thin crack in the door. 

This was his constant fear—that Ernestina was right: he was bad, he deserved Slytherin. Not because of any act he committed—he was above minor morality—but because he took no pleasure from the acts themselves. He liked the sneaking, the whispers, the illicit giggles—but the actually things he did with young ladies in the late-night common room or in empty corridors actually left him a bit off-balance, a bit hollowed out. 

So he didn’t talk to his roommates about Ernestina, and he didn’t talk to her again, and he did his best to not dwell on the memory of what had happened that afternoon. There were easy methods of distraction. The warm weather was perfect for plotting pranks by the lakeside, procrastinating on finals studying, taunting Remus for his more compulsive tendencies. 

He couldn’t help but obsess in the in-between moments—walking alone to the greenhouse, or just before falling asleep. Why hadn’t he enjoyed that half an hour in the broom closet? Wasn’t he supposed to be looking forward to more experiences? Something was clearly very wrong with him, and whenever he thought of Ernestina—the sound of her quick breath, the feel of her body—he felt like he might vomit. 

So he moved faster than before. Drank more fire whiskey, skipped more classes, stayed up so late that every morning his eyes were red-rimmed and his hands were shaking. He passed the nights pacing the common room, leaning out the window to smoke the muggle cigarettes he’d pilfered off of a fifth year Ravenclaw. He spent the days in bed sleeping it off—the hangovers, the nerves, the anger and fear. 

On this afternoon, he skipped Herbology, preferring the silent autonomy of the dormitory to the crowded, hot greenhouse and Sprout’s annoying enthusiasm for devil’s snare. He was just settling down in his bed when the door opened with a slow, quiet creak—the kind that only Remus could unassumingly muster. He peeked out of the bedclothes to see the boy creep towards his own mattress, looking pale and ill. 

“Remus?” 

The boy jumped, pressed a hand to his chest. “Merlin, Sirius!” He whirled around, eyebrows constricting. “Don’t you have class to go to? Do you ever even go to class any more?” 

“You don’t look so good, Lupin.” He stared out from his blankets at the way Remus’s face seemed thinner than before, his skin more sallow. A new scar ran across his cheek, a dark slash across the white flesh. Remus looked worn and tired, and Sirius wondered if this was a new happening or if maybe he hadn’t properly looked at the boy in months. 

Remus shrugged half-heartedly, letting his satchel drop to the rug in front of his bed. “Coming down with something.” Sirius glanced at the wall calendar pinned above Remus’s desk. Half a week till the moon. It was funny how his own life had grown to fit the phases of the moon. Though they weren’t physically affected, James, Peter and Sirius still grew accustomed to the ways their lives changed with their friend’s monthly transformations. 

“Do you… need something?” 

Remus let out a little laugh. “Just a lie down.” He pulled the curtain back on his own bed, then glanced over at Sirius’s bed. “Are you okay?” 

Now it was Sirius’s time to laugh. Was he okay? Of course he was. Sirius Black was always okay. He rolled to his back without answering, as if turning away from the question could fully deflect it. 

The sound of four footsteps, then “Sirius?” right outside of his bed. He still didn’t turn to the voice, didn’t acknowledge the question. “What’s wrong? Please tell me.” 

If Peter had asked, Sirius would have told him to fuck off. And if James had asked, he would have mustered some joke to convince his best friend that he was fine. But Remus was too good at secrets, and Sirius had never been able to lie fluently under his stare. And now that Remus was kneeling by the side of his bed with his two hands bunched up in the comforter, he couldn’t just say he was okay. 

He rolled to his side to face Remus, those brown eyes that were always so serious, so empathetic. “Don’t worry, Remy,” he muttered, but the words felt tight. 

“Something’s wrong. You can lie to James and Peter and whoever else, but you can’t lie to me. I’m too good at it myself.” He smiled wryly. 

“I’m pretty good too, Remus. You forget my family line.” 

“Secrets and lies on your family crest.” 

“You’ve been researching!” 

Remus laughed, shifted, but didn’t leave. “You can’t distract me with jokes. What’s wrong?” 

There were no distractions now, no pretending he misheard the question. “I don’t want to talk about it, Remus. Talking doesn’t help.” 

“Then we can just sit.” Remus’s smile was so slow, flashing across his tired face like a sunray slanting briefly through a closed curtain, that Sirius nearly did tell him everything. 

But he wouldn’t be Sirius Black if he spilled his guts whenever anything bothered him. “I’m really going to be alright, Remus.” And somehow, saying those words out loud made him actually believe them. “But you’re not if you don’t sleep off whatever you’ve got. Time of the month woes?” 

Remus just smiled—this time tight and opaque, a screen set up to obstruct part of a room. “I’ll be… alright.” Sirius reached out, clasped a hand to his shoulder. What comfort was there to give? 

“You will be. We will be.” 

Two weeks later, Peter showed up to the dorm room in a fit of giggles. “Oy, Pettigrew, what the hell are you wanking on about?” Sirius seethed from where he sat, cross-legged on his bed with text books and parchment spread over the crumpled sheets. Finals studying had put all four of them in foul moods, but Sirius had outdone them all in a spectacular show of tantrums. 

“I know something,” he said simply, pressing his hand over his mouth to stifle further laughs. 

James’s bed hangings rustled, then whipped back. “Spit it out, Pete. There’s no use playing around, we all have naps to take.” 

“Essays to write,” Remus corrected from his familiar post at his desk. 

But Peter was rarely the only one to hold a bit of information, and he didn’t want to just drop all of his knowledge without having a bit of fun. “Well, I was by the kitchens, feeling a bit peckish …” 

“As always,” Sirius interjected. Peter was too excited about his news to illicit anything more than an eye roll. 

“And I heard someone say your name.” He turned to Sirius with a look of wild glee. 

Sirius stretched out, rolling over the piles of parchment and open books, clearly unconcerned with any gossip that might be floating around the castle like motes of harmless dust. “All talk is good talk,” he drawled. 

“How many rumors are there about Sirius Bloody Black in this castle?” James asked with a little bark of laughter. “Just this week I heard he had a ten inch—“ 

“Out with it!” Sirius demanded. 

“I overheard Ernestina Green…” And from that name forward, Sirius could not hear what Peter recalled (with relish) from the rushing in his ears. He lay on his back, staring up at the canopy, as Peter whooped and James demanded why he hadn’t shared before. 

He was silent for a long minute. Though he hadn’t glanced around, he could feel Remus’s eyes on him. Could feel the cogs in the boy’s head turning, working towards some understanding. 

But he could dazzle people, could distract them from the main focus like a series of Muggle magic tricks, a sleight of hand. “A Black boy,” he drawled, “never kisses and tells.” 

“Oh, come off it, I’ve heard about hundreds of your kisses in excruciating detail.” James said. 

Sirius ran his hand through his hair and mustered his most convincing lazy grin. He could deny what Peter said, but what was the point? A normal boy would relish in the revelation. “I don’t want to talk my own game up, nobody appreciates a braggart…” He sat up slowly, quirking a brow. “But since Pete’s provided me with the perfect introductory speech…” 

And so they moved to sit in a circle on the big rug and Sirius told the story with his most dramatic gestures and rude jokes, and his friends whooped and clapped him on the back. And by the time the whole story had been wrenched from him, retold, and parodied, he was so exhausted that there was no time for studying or considerations. There was only energy for crawling to bed and pulling the curtains closed. 

So he lay in the dark trying to still his breathing, trying to calm his mind, thinking of all the things he would never tell anyone.


	4. Summer, Fourth Year (Peter)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When James throws a summer party, Peter feels self-conscious. Then he sees the perfect opportunity to make a move on his school year crush.

Peter hated the way the heat made his skin slick and red, beaded sweat along his hairline, smothered up against his face so that his cheeks were embarrassingly flushed. He hated the button-up shirt he was wearing, stained under the armpits and down his back—it had seemed such a good purchase at the store, but now it felt entirely something a grandpa would wear (as soon as he’d shown up through the floo network, Sirius had called out “Why is your shirt the color of cotton candy?” and James had seconded, “After you vomit it up"). He hated how awkward he felt at this bonfire at the Potter’s—James’s parents were out of town, leaving the house and the sprawling backyard free for teenagers to overtake with their flagons of butterbeer and flasks of pilfered fire whiskey.

He’d stuttered his way through a merciless conversation with Marlene McKinnon, accidentally eyeing her breasts rather obviously three times until she'd abruptly excused herself. The whiskey-spiked cider he downed made him feel off-balance and sleepy instead of confident. Really, all he wanted was to crawl up to the guest bedroom where he’d set a pallet on the floor. These social situations were fine for James and Sirius, of course, and even Remus could pull off being charmingly aloof. But Peter always felt like a desperate hanger-on, the boy invited out of obligation. 

Four years of friendship with those three extraordinary boys, and still he felt as if they were always a day away from abandoning him. How could he make himself indispensable to these boys who needed nothing they couldn’t provide themselves? The best he could do was supply a punching bag to their taunts, the minor curses they tried to test out. 

He was being pessimistic tonight. There were good things—wonderful things—that their friendship provided. Besides the social status that came along with membership to the Marauders, there was true friendship. Brotherhood, even 

But he was still smarting over Sirius’s offhand comment that morning about his shirt, and James’s quick uptake on the joke. Remus hadn’t joined in—had just flashed a thin smile—but Remus hadn’t come to protect him either. Peter had laughed nervously, brushed it off, but he’d felt like a complete idiot ever since. 

The night hadn’t gone well for anyone, really. Remus had been quiet and pensive, the way he usually acted around too many people at once. James was in a foul mood because, as usual, Lily Evans had completely ignored any invitation he put forth. Sirius drank far too much far too early, and had already puked behind the mulberry bush. It hadn’t stopped him from drinking more. 

He wandered away from the burning glow of the bonfire, to where the night air could wrap cool around him. Why couldn’t he stop comparing himself to his friends? Nothing could be gained from it—and as often as he told himself that, he never could stop. He leaned against the edge of the house, watching the scene ahead spread out free from him. From the dark lawn, little sparks rose—a hundred fireflies that grew indistinct from the embers of the fire the closer they grew to that knot of teenagers. A few girls were swaying, twirling—dancing to no music except what was in their own heads. Sirius and James had their heads inclined together, their faces orange in the fire’s glow. 

This was what upset him the most, deep down. That moments could continue so flawlessly without him, that nobody missed him in his absence. He wondered how long it would take for them to notice he had left, how long someone would hunt him out in the shadows. Whether someone would hunt him out at all. 

There was a bang from inside the curse, a curse, a series of giggles. Throughout the evening, more and more teenagers had showed up through the fireplace. James had outdone himself with the owled invitations: a record-breaking number of visitors danced on the Potter’s lawn. 

Peter stiffened. Should he wander back to the fire? Should he keep standing by the doorway like an idiot? The laughs were distinctively female, and before he could make up his mind of where to go one of the voices froze him in his place. 

_Dorcas Meadowes._

Slender blonde, second-string Gryffindor keeper, excellent at charms and shit at potions. He could fill a book with the things he remembered about her. The sound of her laugh, the dark grey she preferred to paint her nails. She was effortlessly smart in the same way as James and Sirius, she was funny in a sarcastic way, she was not afraid to duel or even fight with her fists when (most commonly) someone on the Slytherin quidditch team made a disparaging comment. 

She was, short and simple, the true love of his teenage life. 

Before he could scurry back to the fire, three girls came out of the house, huddled together and whispering. Should he say hi? Should he sink back in the darkness? He hated his indecision, hated himself. She was so close, he should say his name, say some witty joke that would make her laugh and touch his shoulder. 

“W-wotcher, Dorcas.” 

She turned, confused, then her eyes brightened with familiarity. “Hey, Pete!” She disconnected herself from her friends, flowed over the lawn in a silver sundress that seemed to glow with a light of its own. 

What was the next step of the conversation? All words flew off like sparks from the fire, disappeared into the night air. “How… are you?” 

She smiled in a distracted way, glancing towards where her friends were walking. “Oh, I’m good. What are you doing over here away from all the action?” 

“Just, er, getting some air.” 

She laughed softly, as if he’d said something either clever or stupid, and Peter flushed unpleasantly. “Well, I think it’s a bit chilly. I’m gonna grab a spot by the fire. You should wander back over, after you get your air.” 

He nodded a bit too quickly, a few too many times. Then there was nothing to do but watch her retreating figure: the way she moved so gracefully, laughed and hugged and knelt by the fire, held her hands up towards the flames and threw her golden hair over his shoulders, glanced towards him once and waved. 

Things had gone okay. Things had gone well. Maybe he hadn’t made a complete fool of himself. Maybe he’d been charming, even. Why shouldn’t Dorcas like him? He was a marauder, after all. He’d talk to her again this night—make her laugh, make her nod, make her flash those perfectly straight teeth. 

He’d play it cool, first. He wandered over to Remus, sank down next to him, only glanced twice to where Dorcas was laughing with her friends. “How’s it, Remus?” Remus stared over the top of his butter beer bottle blearily, flashed a transparent grin. “S’fine, Peter.” 

“Having a good night, then?” 

He looked up to the sky, where the moon was just a fingernail clipping. “As good as any.” 

He’d forgotten how frustrating a drunk Remus Lupin would be. He spoke like a vague divination lesson—little snippets like premonitions that made no sense. 

“I was just thinking,” Remus said slowly, “that we’ll never be so young again.” 

What was there to say to that? Peter grunted in response. But the more he thought about what Remus said, the more fitting it seemed. 

They were young, now. Out in the cool summer air, huddled around the fire, making mistakes and cleaning up after themselves (rather sloppily). There was a pleasure in this youth—to Peter, it seemed this would last forever. There was something sobering in Remus’s stare—the way the fire was reflected in his eyes, pools of light falling deeper and deeper. “Well…” He shifted uncomfortably. “I think I’ll see, er… how the others are…” 

Remus wasn’t listening anyway. Peter shifted away, thinking of Dorcas, of how young they were, of all the possibilities opening up in front of him. He grinned to himself, edged along the fire to wear she was sitting. 

Her hair glowed in the fire. She was leaning forward, talking to Sirius. That was good, he had a reason to go over there. He tried his best to saunter, though it was a verb that never paired well with his bow legs. Sirius glanced towards him, raised one eyebrow—that was good. This would go perfectly. He was young, and he was charming. He would get what he wanted. 

Sirius was leaning forward, surely to invite him over. But no, he was twisting a strand of Dorcas’s hair around his finger, and he was leering over her shoulder for just a moment, giving Peter a wink. And then he was kissing her, one hand pressed to the side of her face. And she didn’t scoot back, didn’t turn away, didn’t slap him. She leaned in, put her hand on his knee, curved her body towards his until they seemed like one figure. A single dark shadow by the fire. 

Peter stood, eyes wide, blood rushing to his head until his ears were full of the sound of his own heartbeat. He felt dizzy, as if he were about to fall down, to vomit, to completely black out. 

He hated this night—the fire, the laughter. He hated their youth, all of the things they did not know, all of the things they never would know. He hated Sirius, and he hated Dorcas. He hated Remus for his distance, he hated the stars that were so far-off and indifferent, he hated the wind in the grass and the glow of the fire and all of the beautiful things around them. Because he felt so ugly inside, so hopeless, so worthless. Most of all, he hated himself.


	5. Fall, Fifth Year (James)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Safe at Hogwarts, it's easy to ignore the list of the dead and missing that shows up in The Daily Prophet. But at the dawn of their fifth year in school, James and Sirius begin to understand what the war will mean for them.

James knew that at fifteen, everything he felt truly confident about would eventually change. But he still strove to believe fully, almost painfully, in a few core things. Loyalty—towards his best friends, his brothers and towards his enemies, on the Quidditch Pitch or in the corridors (with a specific hateful burning reserved towards Severus Snape). He believed in a careful dichotomy—he enjoyed people immensely, or he never wanted them around, and there was rarely any room for change.

He believed in love. Romantic love, stereotypical love, embarrassing and life-consuming love. Because there was one person James had changed his mind about, and now as he walked across the Hogwarts grounds all it takes is a flash of a red-breasted bird or the twining fibers of a red scarf in the wind to bring Lily Evans to his mind. He used to think she was an annoying know-it-all, a stick in the mud. Now when he looked at her, he understood divination. Because he could read the shapes in her hair, the silent messages in her downcast eyes and tightly closed lips. They were meant to be together. 

Today, he and Sirius wandered all the way to the edge of the grounds, to the closed gates topped with winged boar statues. 

“Ugly buggers, huh,” Sirius mused, hands shoved in the pockets of his leather jacket. Over the summer, the boy had become obsessed with muggle motorcycle culture, and now he paraded around in his secondhand bomber jacket whenever possible. 

“Like me and you,” James elbowed him, and they grappled for a minute, bodies pressed up against each other in the same spirit as the wrestling matches of their younger years. 

“You’ve been far too self-depreciating, mate. The angsty teenage thing is fine in poetry, but in real life it’s kind of tiring.” Sirius teased, with a slight sting of truth. As the leaves changed their hues, James became more and more distracted. It was as though Evans had slipped him a love potion. She was all he could think about, but she wouldn’t give him a second glance, couldn’t look at him without a sneer of dislike. 

“I am a condemned man,” he finally responded, his voice low and over-dramatic. “Every step I walk is cursed.” They were joking, always joking. But there was a truth under the surface, one they could both navigate even if an outside listener wouldn’t be able to detect anything deeper than two fifteen year old boys muttering in the crisp air. 

“Oh, bloody cry about it. What you need is a good, firm wank off. Dor has some friends I can introduce you to.” 

“Now that you’re in a relationship, you’re the matchmaker of the common room? Where’s the Black I used to know, the ‘I won’t be tied down’ bastard who used to shag older girls in broom closets?” 

Sirius shrugged. “Broom closets are too claustrophobic. And Dor smells nice.” He grinned, as if that was the only real reason to ever start seeing someone. 

“Remus smells quite nice too,” James pointed out. “I don’t see you snogging him by the fireplace.” 

“If Remus ever snogs anyone by the fireplace, myself included, I will spontaneously combust. That boy has the sex drive of a neutered niffler.” 

They both laughed, their breath coming out in little puffs. It had just turned cold enough to scatter frost on the lawns. James was dreading winter in an obscure, far-off way. He knew, reasonably, that in a few weeks he’d be sequestered to the castle. But he survived by convincing himself that all unpleasant things were too far-off to ever really affect him. 

“Read the prophet this morning?” Sirius asked as they turned to walk back to the castle. 

“Mmm.” They rarely talked about the _Prophet_ headlines—the attacks, the deaths. People spoke of a war. But it was so easy to ignore at school, where there were essays to write and girls to chase and Sunday afternoons to spend walking to every corner of the grounds with your best mates, finding shortcuts and passages and secrets that belonged only to them. 

There were strips in time, pressed into the days like bookmarks in the novels of their lives, where they paused to consider what the war might truly mean. James worried before he fell asleep. He lay, staring up into the shadows of his canopy, reeling through every defensive spell he could use to protect his parents, his best friends. He never worried about defending himself. There were worse things than being harmed, or even being killed. In Quidditch, he’d learned that everything relied on peripheral vision, and he used this theory to approach the war as well. He couldn’t handle looking at things straight on or he’d get distracted from everything that needed his focus. Instead, he could recognize the way he felt from the side—he could accept it, and live alongside it, without ever fully embracing it. 

People were dying. People would continue to die. The dead and missing list would gain black and white inches on the _Prophet page._

He would work and learn how to protect the ones that he loved. 

He would die for them. 

“I wish they’d teach us unforgiveable spells,” Sirius muttered. “I’d like to let loose on a death eater…” He bent to pick up a twig, and knelt on the brown grass snapping it into little bits. 

“Don’t say that.” James spoke gently, but urgently. “I understand why you feel that way, but we have to fight against those thoughts. We have to be better than them.” 

Sirius let out a little bark of laughter. “Better than them? What could we do to be worse than them?” He flung the rest of the twig as far as he could and straightened up, tugging his jacked up over his shoulders. “I think…” he was speaking softly now, wrapping his arms around his chest as if warding off a chill. “I think that Regulus may be getting in with them.” 

They never spoke of Regulus Black, Sirius’s broad-shouldered younger brother. Instead of taunting him or fighting him, the way they treated Severus Snape or some of the other Slytherins, Sirius resolutely refused to recognize he was alive. 

James pushed his hands deep into his pockets, unsure of what to say. Just as they rarely spoke of the war, they did not speak of Sirius’s family. There were occasional drunken jokes about his mother, and the occasional curse towards his father, but nothing ever delved past the surface. Now that Sirius had brought it up, he wasn’t sure how to proceed. 

“Do you think you should talk to him?” He asked finally. 

“No,” Sirius said. “I’ve just been thinking about it, and I wanted to say it out loud to someone.” He paused for a long time, staring towards the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where the black trees jutted up into the blue sky. He squinted towards the line where black met blue. “If it comes to it… I will kill him.” 

They both stood silent, tense, eyes locked. James knew better than to argue. There had always been an understanding between them—this feeling that, though they came from different families and had different opinions, they were somehow made of the same stuff. He couldn’t always understand Sirius’s darkest whims, and he didn’t always support his most brazen plans, but there were deeper pools of connection. Something had bonded them from that first day on the Hogwarts Express, and that bond meant that all he could do was nod towards the boy who was trying his hardest to hide the way his hands shivered in the cold air. 

They didn’t need words. 

And he knew, now that Sirius had said these thoughts out loud, that the conversation was over. So he played the best mate role again by changing the subject. “What about the transformations, then? I’ve been looking up a few more tips, practicing some advanced transfiguration…” 

“Was that you who transformed my toothbrush into a cactus?” 

James laughed, pleased that his prank hadn’t gone unnoticed. “The thing is, Sirius… I’ve been thinking of it all like some big joke, like a prank we could never really follow through on. But I think it’s possible. I really think we could do it.” 

“Of course we bloody can! Do you think I’d spend a year researching something if I didn’t plan to actually try?” 

“But it’s ridiculous! It’s dangerous! Wizards twice our age have failed!” 

“And we won’t.” Sirius’s tone conveyed that his faith was absolute. 

“We won’t,” James echoed. Without discussing it, they had begun wandering back to the castle. 

“We owe it,” Sirius muttered. “To him.” 

Anyone watching the two figures would have seen them huddle close together, walking closely with their heads inclined. Anyone who was familiar with said silhouettes would have assumed they were discussing some new prank or disturbance, but their quiet tone and stiff shoulders seemed to hint at something more serious. 

“How long are we going to talk and research and theorize?” Sirius asked, tugging at the sleeves of his jacket in an impatient way. 

“As long as it takes.” 

“It’s taken long enough,” he said emphatically. “I’m doing it. Friday night.” 

And James knew there would be no stopping him. There was no real need for caution, and no need for encouragement, because Sirius would do it either way. 

He knew Sirius could do it. He knew he could do it. Because in the end, this was the path they had been set upon. They hadn’t made any choices. Their choices had been made for them. 

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll try. We’ll do it. But…” He paused, and a lopsided grin flashed across his face. “I think Pete will need a bit more help.”


	6. Winter, Fifth Year (Remus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus has always been good at keeping secrets. During winter break, he learns that Sirius has been keeping a few secrets as well.

Remus loved the way the quill felt in his hand, so steady and confident as he measured out a straight edge with a ruler and pulled an inked line down the side of the paper. He’d drawn so many preliminary maps of the school that he’d lost count, but he found that this cartography gave him a sense of peace, a feeling of belonging in the moment that he could rarely ever grasp.

Sirius had dreamt up the map, and like so many of his grand schemes, he’d fully devoted himself to it for exactly two weeks. Then he’d found some new ingenious plan to follow, and his sheets of parchment and dog-eared library books had been left to gather dust on top of his trunk. 

When Remus first heard of the plans for the map, he’d been cautiously disapproving. Most of Sirius’s plans were somehow dangerous or illegal, and Remus’s new prefect badge weighed him down considerably. But the plans Remus and James had drawn up were really quite genius. They were sketchy and half-baked, yes, but when Remus leafed through them he knew they were all possible. He’d been breathless by his friends’ intelligence, and his heart had sped up at the possibility. 

Who knew the castle better than the four of them? Every abandoned corridor, every sealed passage. And now, they knew the forest as no one else did. They knew it from paws and hooves, from sharp scents and animal instincts. Hogwarts, the grounds, the forest… It was theirs, and what better way to fully claim it than to map every hallway, every classroom, even ever student in miniscule living dots? 

Remus knew what Hogwarts meant to him, and though his friends were very different, he knew that in the uniqueness of their ownership they all felt the same strong emotions about the castle they’d lived for the past five years. 

To Remus, Hogwarts was afternoons spent lazing by the lake, bringing a bag full of books to neglect (because having them next to him at least meant he could stifle procrastinator’s guilt) as he listened to Sirius tell another dirty joke. Hogwarts was hunching under James’s cloak to creep down to the kitchens for cups of hot chocolate, trying to remember each house elf’s name so he could thank them all individually. It was friendship, for the first time in his life. It was a sense of belonging, a sense of unity, a sense of unapologetic existence. People wanted him to be here. His friends knew his deepest secrets and they weren’t horrified or disgusted. That mere fact still astounded him, made him catch his breath when he considered it for too long. 

So James and Sirius put the preliminary work into the map, and he’d taken up the pieces as his own. Peter had contributed with the idea of incorporating their personalities into the very fabric of the lines—a map that could grow and change and respond to the reader, a map that would somehow insure that their spirit would forever be woven into the fabric of life at Hogwarts. And Remus knew his part was the details—the measuring of the hallways, the scoping of the lines. He was glad to have this part, because he knew he could do it well. 

The sound of familiar footsteps behind him. He never had to turn to see which of his friends was approaching. Peter had a heavy sort of shuffle, James had an uneven and impatient sort of skip, Sirius had a steady lope. This time, he knew Sirius Black was behind him even before the boy was leaning over his shoulder, a string of licorice wand dangling from his mouth. 

“Even when we have no homework, you find something to do,” he muttered disgustedly. 

“This is… I dunno… fun’s not the right word. Satisfying? It calms me down. Makes me feel sane.” Remus grinned as he rubbed a hand over his eyes. Explaining himself to Sirius was always pointless—they would never understand each other. 

“It’s the Christmas hols, Moony. You should be sleeping in front of the fireplace, or sneaking off to Honeyduke’s.” 

“I suppose that’s what you’ve already done today?” 

“Yes, and a thousand other pointless and wonderful things.” 

This vacation, Remus and Sirius both opted to stay in the castle while the others went home for family holidays. Sirius had gone on a long rant about how he’d never willingly step foot in Grimmauld Place again, and Remus had just shrugged in a sad way. The moon was three days before Christmas. 

It had been nice, really, to have time spent just with Sirius. Nicer than Remus really wanted to recognize. There had been changes in all of them within the last year, as they grew to adults. Remus had been startled with his own changes—among the stretching and shifting of his body, there had come new urges that he found incredibly frightening. More frightening, sometimes, than the blood thirst of the wolf on full moon nights. 

Some secrets were easier to keep, but that didn’t make them easier to bare. Because whenever he hears Dorcas giggling from Sirius’s bed, or saw them draped across each other in front of the fire, his stomach clenched in a way he didn’t care to put a name to. He was jealous of James’s casual relationship with the boy too—that James didn’t think twice before touching Sirius, before sitting down next to him or sprawling across a bed with him. 

These were not normal teenage worries. These were not normal teenage desires. But every once in awhile, he’d look up to find Sirius watching him. Not as if he were spacing out or joking around, but as if he was really focusing on him. Sirius always looked away quickly when he was discovered, as if he was surprised, even guilty, to have been caught. 

Something kept whispering in Remus's brain--that he was not the only one with secrets. 

Winter break had been as mundane as possible, though. They played Wizard Chess (Remus won most often, simply because Sirius lost patience.) They went for walks through the nearly empty castle and built a gigantic, well-endowed pair of snowmen. They wrote rude letters to James and Peter and discussed the map and ate too much food and took afternoon naps, and it was all normal. Remus convinced himself as often as he could that if he ignored his brain whispers, everything would fall back to how it always had been. They would be friends, good friends, and James and Peter would come back and they would resume their lives. 

Sirius flung himself down on Remus’s bed, which was conveniently made, and began ripping open a pile of letters. “Peter wrote us. He really needs to work on his handwriting.” He tossed the letter towards Remus, but it only made it halfway there before crumpling to the floor. 

“You’re one to talk. Half of these notes are unreadable.” 

“Those would all be James’s.” 

“Oh yeah, I’m so sure…” He sketched out a final label then turned to Sirius, and he was about to comment about the boy’s boots on his comforter when he noticed the odd look on his face. 

Sirius was on his back, hair spread out black over Remus’s white pillowcase, holding a letter directly over his face and wincing as he passed down ever line. “What is it?” he asked without thinking, wondering if it was a note from James. 

“It’s just Dor…” Sirius paused, finished the note, then folded it and tucked it inside of his robes. 

Something serpent-like slid down Remus’s intestines—a quick, hot slithering at her name. He hoped his face wasn’t flushing. 

“I didn’t know reading a note from your girlfriend could cause you such intense pain.” 

Sirius sighed, wrenching himself into a sitting position. “She just comes off differently on paper than in person. When we’re together, we treat everything like it’s some big joke. She’s like… like me, or James, but in bird form.” 

Truthfully, Dorcas and Sirius were a perfect match, which may have been the true edge of Remus’s jealousy. She was smart and sarcastic and witty; she didn’t flinch at a dirty joke. She was good-looking enough to know it, and vain enough to handle spending time with the ever-preening Sirius. Really, Remus had no reason to dislike her, which just made it so all the more. 

“But her letters are different?” Remus felt that he should drop the subject, but a mischievous, marauder-ish half of him wanted to pick at the wound. He stood up awkwardly, reaching his arms to the ceiling so that his sweater rode up to reveal a stretch of pale skin. His back popped painfully—he’d been sitting for too long. 

“They’re just so… serious. And I don’t want to… get wrapped up in all of it, you know.” 

“Wrapped up in all of it? You’ve been snogging her, and only her, for almost half a year. We’re all still in shock. We never thought we’d see the day.” 

Sirius shrugged and attempted a smile, but he looked miserable. He stood up and paced the length of the room, hands shoved into his robe pockets. “I just feel like…” He paused and stared towards where Remus sat, as it gauging his audience. “I just feel like I’m not doing it right… or… something.” This was odd; Sirius Black was never one to mince his words. “I like spending time with Dor, and she makes me laugh a lot, and I think she’s bloody brilliant. But…” He stopped in front of the window, peering out through the frost-glazed glass to the empty grounds below. Remus moved to sit on the edge of his bed, and stayed very still, as if any sudden movement would scare Sirius off. 

Instinctively, he knew Sirius hadn’t talked about these worries with anyone else. The way Sirius was struggling to vocalize his thoughts showed that he’d been brooding over them for weeks, even months. They had the fermented stink of worries too-long spent circling the same vat. 

“I just don’t think I’m as serious as she is. I certainly don’t feel any… love. But we’re fifteen, right? We shouldn’t feel any love. Life’s not all some St. Valentines day card, like James makes it out to be.” His voice was rising a bit, it seemed like it was about to crack. “And how am I supposed to tell my girlfriend I’m not really interested in snogging her, or doing anything else? Because we already do all those things, and I’ve done those things with other girls, and they’ve never felt right. They’ve always made me feel really tired, you know? Like I’ve never really got the knack of it, but I just have to keep pretending.” 

He turned to stare at Remus, eyes wide as if pleading for some affirmation. What was there to say? They stared across the room from each other, Remus his usual tired self, Sirius looking much paler and younger than usual. Should he comfort the boy? Tell him to keep faking it? Give him a few hints about how to keep secrets to yourself, how to bury them down within your chest until you almost believed the lies you lived every day? 

Remus let out a whoosh of air, and his shoulders slumped down. “It’s hard to pretend,” he said softly. “It’s tiring. It makes you sick.” 

Sirius nodded solemnly. He always looked so brave, so frustratingly cocky, and now he looked like a frightened little boy. He walked over to his trunk and knelt down, rifling through the contents. With a slight “ah!” he found what he was looking for—a silver flask gifted by James last Christmas, full to the stopper with Fire Whiskey. He moved to sit next to Remus, shaking his head slowly. “I should end it with her, maybe.” 

“But you’d still be pretending.” 

“Maybe that’s the way it has to be.” He took a long draw from the flask, gave his head a little shake, passed it to Remus. The liquid in his throat burned a course all the way to his stomach, and sent a heat buzzing through his veins. He could feel his face flushing slightly, and he took another small nip before passing it back to Sirius. He hated to admit how much he liked to drink, because it meant admitting to letting go of himself. But sometimes it was nice to not be in control. 

They passed the flask back a few more times in silence, two sets of eyes focused on the far side of the room. Remus was hyper-aware of how close they sat, of how their fingers brushed each time they passed the flask between them. 

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you,” he said softly. “I think everyone has something to hide. I think it’s just about learning to living with them.” 

“Well that’s depressing.” Sirius slumped sideways. 

Remus let out a dry laugh. “I’ll keep your secrets,” he said softly. “Sometimes I feel like it’s all I’m good for.” 

“You’re good for more than that.” Sirius’s eyes were out of focus—he seemed to be looking at something far away. 

Remus wasn’t sure if he should laugh or if he should even respond. The whiskey flush hadn’t faded—instead, the heat kept growing in his cheeks. He was grateful that Sirius was drunk to the point of distraction. The room was tilting in the pleasant amber-colored light. Outside the window, blue flakes of snow twirled in the dusk. Each flake was light, and when the breeze around Gryffindor Tower caught them, it seemed it was snowing upwards. Remus felt so off-balance that it made perfect sense for snow to rise from the ground instead of falling from the sky. 

He lay down next to Sirius, horizontal across the mattress so his long legs splayed out from the edge. The comforter against his face was warm as he turned to eye Sirius’s profile—the mountain range of his close-up brows, nose, chin. Sirius turned, his hair falling over his eyes, his mouth open just a tiny bit like he was going to sigh. 

And Remus understood that this moment was inevitable. Every day of their friendship had progressed to here—this drunken moment too close on the beds when, without any effort or preconceived plan, their faces were moving closer together. It happened slowly—there was plenty of time to turn back, but it wasn’t a possibility because this was their path, their course, a train track they could not derail from. Sirius’s eyes were still far-off, but in the moment before their lips brushed his gaze sharpened. He could feel his heartbeat, the rush of blood in his veins. Sirius’s lips were unresponsive and chapped. His mouth tasted of whiskey and stale breath. Remus thought, for the first few seconds their mouths were pressed together, that he’d made a dire mistake. Maybe Sirius was passed out, or maybe he was too drunk to realize what was happening. But then their mouths were forming together, lips spreading slightly. Sirius let out the smallest moan, raised a hand to cradle the side of Remus’s face. And that’s how he knew this was right—that it was something they both wanted, and not just something he’d dreamed over by himself. 

And it didn’t matter that he had no idea what he was doing, or that he’d never kissed anyone in his life. Because this was so instinctively right, it was like putting his bookshelves in alphabetical order or falling asleep. Something that came completely natural to him, something he couldn’t imagine not doing. Sirius’s drunken instincts were kicking in. He pulled back, kissed him softly once, twice, three times—and now Remus could say he’d kissed Sirius multiple times, that they’d kissed for minutes. And now Sirius’s mouth was pressing over his cheek, his eyelid, wandering down to brush the hollow of his neck. He had no idea what to do, but maybe the answer was to do nothing. To just lay there, breathing slowly, eyes half-closed. 

Remus was so accustomed to hiding and lying that even in his down time he could find something to worry about. But now, miraculously, he wasn’t worried about anything. He trusted Sirius to lead him through these steps—a flick of tongue, a flash of teeth, a low and gravelly laugh that sent a puff of warm air against his mouth. Because he trusted Sirius, he was brave—brave enough to pull his body on top of the other boy’s, feel the contours of Sirius shift beneath his own as he pressed their mouths together again. 

In the grand scheme of things, this tangle was quite innocent. But when they lay, Remus’s head on Sirius’s chest, they both felt as though they’d broken some rule. But in those moments directly following, with swollen lips and beating hearts, neither bothered about feeling sorry. Sirius picked through his hair, fingers soothing against his scalp, and everything felt so slow and so nice that he just might fall— 

“Ow!” A strand of hair was tugged mercilessly from his scalp, and he pulled back to stare accusingly into Sirius’s laughing face. 

“You have a gray hair, Remus.” He twirled a silver stand between his fingers. 

“Y-you bastard,” Remus stuttered, pressing a hand dramatically to his head while the other kept his balance on the other side of Sirius’s head. “Was now really the time?” 

“I did you a favor…” He brought the hair up to his lips and gave a little puff of air, sending it blowing to the side of the bed. “Make a wish…” 

Remus bent down again and kissed him. They were too drunk. They were too young. They were too confused and too unsure and too scared, and this would never work. But for now, it was fine. Because they were both together in this moment, and from what Remus could see from the gap in the canopy, the snow was falling up.


	7. Spring, Fifth Year (Peter)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter overhears something he wishes he hadn't.

Sirius had completed the transformation first, months ago, in a flash of black fur and laughing white fangs. James had completed a few weeks later—the stag with its long, pointed antlers—something regal and strong. Peter couldn’t muster the courage to try.

“You’re just scared of what you’ll be,” Sirius muttered across the breakfast table, spreading a huge spoonful of jam on a bit of wheat toast. “You’ll probably be some sort of slug… The kind people won’t even trod upon because they’re so disgusting.” 

“Don’t pay him any mind,” James said over the potions book propped up against a flagon of pumpkin juice. “We can’t all be flea-bitten mutts.” 

Peter sighed miserably into his pile of eggs. Now that they’d mastered the transformations, Sirius and James treated it all as some grand joke. But he remembered the look of fear in Sirius’s eye when he first tried—just a quick glimmer of anxiety, but a true flash all the same. He loved the benefits of being friends with the marauders—the respect, the acclaim. Hanging round with the other boys made him feel important for the first time in his life. But sometimes, being friends with them made him feel very small, very untalented. It was hard to trail after the most talented boys in the school. 

Remus entered from across the Great Hall, looking very tired in his oversized secondhand robes. He paused on his way to tell off a few second years who were squirting a bottle of ketchup onto the long Ravenclaw table. 

He slumped down next to Sirius, who moved to pass a jug of orange juice his way. “Tired?” 

“Mmm.” 

Peter’s eyes flitted from Sirius’s face to Remus’s. Both boys looked exhausted. Remus had been out on Prefect’s rounds all night last night—even after the Prefect’s curfew had come and gone, he hadn’t shown up. And Sirius sneaked out under the cloak around midnight—Peter had heard the floorboards creaking and had peeked out to see the hangings of Sirius’s bed just barely wavering. 

Peter didn’t do the best in his classes, and he wasn’t always the most clever, but he was good at uncovering people’s secrets. He was good at lying low, observing the small things, connecting the split threads. And now, he had a feeling something was going on—something Remus and Sirius were holding up between them, as delicate as a candle flame, with just the same capacity to burn them both. 

“You’ve got to eat something, Remus,” Sirius said in his bossiest voice. 

“No, I don’t…” Remus shook his head, grimaced at the plate of sausages the boy had forced under his nose. “I’m not hungry. My stomach’s all in knots.” 

“Your stomach always gets funny when it’s your time of the month. And you always get weepy and eat too much chocolate. It’s a bloody shame, really. I might as well be going ‘round with Dor still.” 

“Dor was never weepy,” James interjected. “Remember that stinging hex she worked out when you broke up with her? I don’t think she shed a tear over you, mate. Just a few really excellent curses.” 

Peter watched then all closely—James was oblivious, but across the table Sirius and Remus were pointedly not looking at each other. “Sirius, didjoo sneak off last night?” he asked as casually as possible. “Heard someone creeping out.” 

For just a second, Sirius glanced up and looked surprised. The look quickly passed into annoyance tinged with disgust. “Sorry, Pete, I’ll make sure to check with you every time I sneak off to the kitchens,” he spat. “Is there a sign-out sheet I should know about?” 

Peter flushed and glanced as Remus, who was resolutely pouring more orange juice into his already-full cup. But the venom in Sirius’s answer told him something was definitely up. What were they off doing on their own? Why was it such a secret? 

“Merlin, calm down Sirius. What crawled up your arse? That’s the third time you’ve snapped at Peter since you got up.” 

“Why don’t you ask what’s wrong with him? Maybe there’s a reason I keep snapping on him.” 

“There’s no reason you ever snap at anyone, Black. Peter hasn’t done anything. It’s all you.” 

Peter glanced gratefully at James. He should maybe be bothered by needing someone else to stand up for him, but instead he was just thankful. 

Sirius stood up abruptly, nearly upsetting the jug of pumpkin juice. “Fine.” His face was stony. “If I’m such a bastard to everyone, I’ll just bug off.” 

“Sirius!” James protested sharply, but the boy was already striding off across the great hall. “What the hell’s up with him?” He turned to Remus, perplexed. 

Remus gave an emotionless shrug. He drained half of his glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood to leave. “I have too much work to worry about Sirius,” he said drolly. “I’ll see you both later.” 

“Wow, everyone’s having a really superb morning, hmm?” James said crossly, toying with a piece of cold bacon. “I might at well go back to bed, for all the fun the world’s offering today.”He stood up dejectedly. “I’m going to the library, I guess. Merlin knows that’s not where I wanted to be for the day.” He took a few steps, then turned around when he realized Peter wasn’t following. “Are you coming?” He was accustomed to Peter following him everywhere, and when the boy didn’t rise to trail after he wasn’t angry—just surprised. 

“No,” Peter sighed. “I’m going to go take a nap, I guess.” His lie wasn’t very good, but James wasn’t paying very much attention. 

So he walked quickly back up to the castle with the pinched face of someone who thought himself on a secret mission. The Gryffindor common room was empty as he crept past the armchairs and the fire, quietly mounting the stairs and pausing outside of his dormitory door, which was open just a crack. 

Just as he suspected, two voices were just audible when he crouched outside. 

Peter felt a slight twinge of shame. He didn’t really like sneaking about and listening at door cracks. But he was good about it—he’d never been caught—and he could never shake the sinking suspicion that there were things his friends would never bother telling him if he didn’t happen to overhear. 

“If you don’t want to tell me what’s wrong, I’m just going to go to the library.” That was Remus, sounding tired and exasperated, as if he were talking to a very small child. 

“Nothing’s bloody wrong. What’s wrong is that everyone keeps asking me if anything’s wrong.” Sirius sounded peaky and insolent, but that was fairly normal as well. 

There was a stretching silence, and Peter wondered if he’d misread his friends. Maybe no secret was going on between them, and Sirius was just in one of his foul moods for no reason at all (a rather common happening, really.) 

From the door crack, he could see a shadow shifting as if someone was pacing on the other side. “Are you feeling bad about last night?” Remus’s voice was so quiet that Peter had to strain to hear. “Because we don’t have to try again, it was stupid to rush into it…” 

Try what again? Rush into what? 

“No, it’s not last night. I don’t want to talk about it.” Sirius’s voice was dull. 

“Well, you weren’t very happy with me last night, either. I don’t feel like pretending I’m some dumb, oblivious wanker, Sirius. You wouldn’t talk to me the whole walk back.” 

“I was just tired. I’m tired now. I’m always bloody tired and nobody will bloody fuck off.” 

Another pause. “Fine. I’ll fuck off.” The sound of bedsprings. 

“Remus! Merlin…” Footsteps. “Look, I’m not angry…” Sirius’s was softer now, gentler. It came from a new angle—he’d walked across the room and was standing closer to the door. Peter stiffened, reeling through his mind for possible excuses in the case of the door being opened. “I’m not angry with you, and I’m not angry about last night. I just need some time to… to think.” 

The sound of a sigh. 

“I just don’t know how to read you,” Remus said. 

“You don’t have to read me at all.” 

“You won’t talk about anything with me.” 

“Talking… talking gets us nowhere.” 

“We’re talking right now.” 

“Maybe we shouldn’t be.” 

“What do you suggest we do instead of talking, then?” 

“Oh, I can think of a thing or two…” Sirius’s voice dissolved in a dark chuckle, and just like that the mood of the conversation changed. 

Something was wrong. Peter was good at guessing his friends, but he was entirely perplexed right now. He couldn’t map their argument, so he couldn’t decipher how they’d ended up at this destination. Curiosity trumped caution, and he edged the door open just barely with his foot. 

“I don’t think this is a good way to resolve this conversation…” Remus was backed up against one of his bedposts, looking as though he were pretending to be cross. 

“Well, it’ll cheer me up considerably…” Sirius stepped closer, pressed a hand to the side of Remus’s face and leaned in to press his mouth to the other boy’s. 

Peter almost fell over backwards. Then the image of him tumbling down the stairs, and of the two boys discovering his dizziness, his utter confusion—he kept his feet. He couldn’t look away. 

Remus had a hand twined in Sirius’s robe, he was smiling up into the boy’s face. “I hope you’re appropriately cheered…” 

This was some dream, some nightmare. He shared a room with them, and this was wrong—was disgusting. But they were his best friends, they were Marauders. Maybe he was still misunderstanding something, but the two were still pressed up against each other, nuzzling against the side of Remus’s bed. 

His face burned, his chest felt tight. He felt the sudden insane urge to cough, or laugh—to be discovered. There was an odd twinge of jealousy—Sirius had James had always been a twosome, and now Remus and Sirius had paired off in their own way. He would be left on his own. 

And he knew, with a little twinge of guilt, that he wouldn’t speak of what he saw. This would be a secret between the two of them, contained unknowingly in his hands. What could he do with this knowledge? He could destroy them with what he knew. But it would destroy all four of them, really. 

The only answer was to restore the full scope of the Marauders, to bind them together most firmly than they already were. He would have to complete his animagus transformation—and soon. As soon as possible. Because then they’d all share a secret, and they’d have to keep him around.


	8. Summer, Fifth Year (Sirius)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a month apart, Sirius and Remus are reunited at the Potters' for summer vacation. Shadow puppets ensue.

Sirius raised his hand in front of the flashlight beam, splaying the shadow of his fingers across the circle of orange light cast on the ceiling of sheets arched above them. “Lookit, it’s a dog,” he boasted, poising his fingers in an intricate tangle. “Er… sort of.”

Next to him on the mattress, Remus laughed. They were both shirtless under the hastily constructed sheet fort, sweating in the thick summer air but both far too stubborn to tear down the shabby fortress that trapped the heat around them. One of Remus’s pajama-clad legs was thrown casually over Sirius’s. This nonchalance still astounded him—he’d never had such a natural, comfortable, responsive relationship with another human being (except perhaps James, but the nature of that friendship was decidedly different.) 

All through July, he and Remus exchanged vague, self-concious owls. Forced apart for the Summer holidays, they seemed unsure of how to proceed with whatever had been growing between them since the winter break. They spent an entire semester lost in the dark—haunting abandoned corridors and old, forgotten passages. To put their memories, their desires down in writing—it couldn’t be done. Sirius feared that the true thrill lay in the sneaking about—the secrets, the whispers, the deceit. The narrow escapes, even—once by James, sick to his stomach and returning unexpectedly from a Hogsmeade trip they’d both opted out of. Once by Peter, back an hour early from a canceled class. 

They hadn’t yet struggled to define themselves, to talk about what was happening. The early encounters had been drunk and wordless. It took months to face each other, silent but sober. 

Sirius was afraid, because they’d been patrons of the dark for so long, that any ray of clarifying light would dissipate whatever grew between them. Their attraction was a mist, a vapor—something that could surround them, fill their lungs, intoxicate them, yes. But something that could blow away all too easily. 

But these weeks in each other’s absence had somehow made the idea of _them_ more tangible. Sirius had drafted letters that attempted to put these thoughts into focus, but each had felt overwrought and somehow dishonest. 

These was honesty in hands, mouths. There was honesty in silence. 

He signed truthfully, with _I miss you,_ which he never bothered to add to James or Pete’s letters. With them, it was a given. But he wanted Remus to know, in undeniable black and white. Those three words were just a hint of his loneliness at Grimmauld Place—the screaming matches with his mother, the stony silence from Regulus, the entire days spent strapped to his bed by apathy. He missed Hogwarts—walking the grounds with James, plotting immature pranks with Pete, walking through the corridors alone during that particular sunrise hour when the windows filled the arched ceilings with golden light. But most of all, he missed Remus, and whatever tremulous threads had begun knitting them closer together. 

Then James’s invitation had come—a week at the Potters. A week of crab apple Quidditch, of twenty minute walks to the Muggle downtown where they could buy ice creams. A week of bonfires and sneaking cigarettes and staying up too late. Of Mrs. Potter grossly overfeeding them with the opaque enthusiasm of a woman who’d always dreamt of a bustling house. Every summer, the invitation came. Every summer, it was the only anchor holding Sirius down. 

He and Remus had arrived by Floo minutes within each other, and had both hurried by unspoken agreement to claim the the guest bedroom (“Oh, no one fight to be my bunkmate,” James had commented wryly, obliviously. “Guess me and Pete will shack it up.”) 

So they restarted this continuation of their double life. Days spent as a distinct foursome—the Marauders, where Remus and Sirius had equal standing with James and Sirius, or Peter and Remus, or any other pairing between the four best friends. And the nights, when they became a distinct pair. When they stayed up as late as they could whispering, muffling laughs, exploring all the modes of physical contact that had been so noticeably absent from their guarded letters. It was different, in a proper bed in a proper house. They both hesitated more, hurried less. On the first night, after an impatient day spent faking enthusiasm for an afternoon hike and avoiding any drawn-out stares between the two of them, after they’d locked the door and lost their clothes, after when they lay on the double mattress not-quite-touching, Remus had whispered “I wanted to write you about this. I wanted to put it all down, every description I could think of.” 

“You should have written me,” Sirius whispered. “I needed more ideas to wank off to.” And they’d both laughed, and kissed, and this was what made everything feel so worthwhile, because it was so easy to be himself. 

They learned that sleep could be surrendered, at least for now, with this delirious new happiness. So during the daylight hours, they threw themselves into the rough housing and jokes. They played and laughed twice as hard so that the other two would detect no difference, ask no questions. But they were just waiting for nightfall, when the army cot set up against the far wall of their bedroom was resolutely ignored—the guest bed was just big enough for two. 

Tonight, there had been a bonfire. Thick ceramic mugs of hot chocolate from Mrs. Potter, spiked with a bottle of sweet hazelnut liquer from Peter ( “Nicked it from my mum, she drinks this stuff like it’s water.”) Back in the silence and safety of the guest room, he and Remus had stripped the sheets off of the cot and knotted them to the overhead fan, laughing like two little boys playing make believe. With the bed enveloped in billowing sheets, Sirius felt less like they were hiding away and more like they were shutting the rest of the world out. 

“Look, what’s this?” He balled his fist and stuck his pinky straight out, forming an indistinct shadow on the sheet in front of him. 

“I dunno, an amoeba? Some disgusting dead thing floating in the jars in Slughorn’s office?” 

“It’s a rat! You don’t get shadows, do you? See its little wormy tail.” He wriggled his pinky. 

“I don’t get shadows? I live in shadow! I’m a bloody creature of the night…” Remus brought both of his hands up, twined them together as best as he could. “What about a stag, hm? Prongs should be represented.” 

“Oh, please don’t invite him into bed with us…” Sirius watched as Remus struggled with his shadow shapes, settling on something vaguely dog-like. “Here…” He spanned his own hand behind Remus’s, the tips of his silhouetted fingers spreading in make-shift antlers. “There. We can put on our own Marauder shadow play.” 

“By the light of the moon,” Remus muttered. Sirius’s hands closed over his own, brought them down to the sheets. 

“One week from now?” 

“Mmm.” 

“Can you feel it?” 

“I can always feel it.” 

The glow cast from the flashlight dulled the scars on Remus’s chest and face, leaving only the worst of them as long, dark gashes on his skin. With his free hand, Sirius reached out to trace a long scar down his ribcage. 

“Don’t.” Remus squirmed away, wincing. He never liked any attention brought to these reminders slashed across his skin. Whenever Sirius tried to acknowledge them, the boy moved away as if Sirius’s touch burned. 

How could Sirius ever tell him how he really felt—that each ridge and imperfection on his flesh was as meaningful and guiding as the lines that bloomed on the Marauder’s Map, a whole world revealed with the correct words. Remus was moving away now, pulling the side of the sheets back to let in a burst of the cooler outside air. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Getting a shirt…” 

“It’s too hot.” 

“I’ll be fine.” 

Sirius reached out, wrapped his arms around the other boy’s waist. Remus struggled for a few seconds, then fell still. “Sirius, what do you want?” A minute ago, they’d been laughing at shadows. Now, there was a tension between them, another layer of things Remus preferred to keep hidden. 

Sirius squirmed to sit up behind him, arms shifting to wrap around his chest. “You.” 

One syllable. Certainly not enough to convey everything he felt—that he wanted Remus’s secrets, his scars, his burdens. But maybe it was enough, because it was true. And being with Remus made Sirius feel, for the first time, that certain truths were the most powerful thing in the world. 

He pressed his mouth to Remus’s shoulder, the curve of his neck. He moved his hands down the boy’s bare torso, flattening his palms over the topography of scars. Each twined under his fingers like a twisting river, or the intersection of two roads. He wanted to map out Remus’s body—the pool of every freckle, the mountains of his hip bones, the flat plain of his stomach and chest. 

They settled back onto the mattress, Remus flushed but smiling, Sirius insistent that he press his lips over the ridge of every scar. And maybe they didn’t need words at all. Maybe they just needed hands and mouths, quiet touches, stifled laughs and moans. Maybe somehow, if he pressed his hand over where Remus’s heart beat, the boy would understand all the things Sirius had never said out loud.


	9. Autumn, Sixth Year (Peter)

Through the classroom window, Peter watched the way the autumn sunlight filtered orange through cellophane layers of changing leaves. Past the closest branches, he could watch the grounds slope away from the arched window of the transfiguration classroom. A stretch of brown grass, newly killed by the first frost, skirting up to the dark edge of the forest.

He glanced across the transfiguration classroom. Exams rustled, quills scratched, someone muffled a cough. Four desks over, Remus huddled so close over his parchment that his nose seemed in danger of rubbing the ink on his page. Directly behind him, Sirius leaned back in his chair and scrawled his answers lazily, as if this was just a five point quiz and not the midterm exam. Since the time he’d seen--whatever it was he had seen--he’d never seen anything untoward between them again. They’d shared a bedroom at James’s over the summer, sure, but Peter had willfully ignored any inner whispers about what might be going on behind the closed guest room door. He very simply did not want to know. 

He couldn’t see James, who was seated right behind his own desk, but he could feel the boy’s foot absently jostling the back of his chair. 

How could they focus on the midterm exam when tonight was a moon night? Peter glanced back out the window, squinting towards the forest again. He couldn’t make out the distinct trees from here—it was all just one dark, ominous shadow grasping skyward with the fingers of bared branches. It would all look different tonight, lit by the moon, viewed up-close from nonhuman eyes. A little thrill made him shiver—the transformation was still terrifying to him, but he could do it, he had to do it, he— 

Thwack! A wand snapped across his parchment. “Mister Pettigrew, I suggest you stop enjoying the view and begin worrying about your exam. Thirty minutes left.” Professor McGonagall arched an eyebrow. In her first two years teaching at Hogwarts, she’d earned a reputation for being incredibly brilliant and incredibly stern. Out of all of his professors, Peter felt the most intimidated by this young witch with her tightly tied back hair and thin-pressed mouth. He blushed not only on his whole face but over his whole body, red blotches rising up on his exposed arms and flooding down his neck. He blinked rapidly as he stared down at his questions, but he could hardly see the page. 

After the exam, Remus nodded solemnly and made his way off the Madame Pomfrey’s. James and Sirius compared answers for a bit, more out of obligation than any real worry about their grades. Peter listened with the sinking feeling that he’d failed quite spectacularly. 

“McGonagall’s not too please with you, ‘eh, Wormtail?” Sirius elbowed him. “What were you thinking about? Surely not the answers.” 

“Thinkin’ bout tonight,” he said. “And, y’know.” 

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Of course we know.” 

Peter blushed—a sad copy of the blush inspired by McGonagall, but a blush all the same. Sirius had a way of making him feel incredibly stupid almost all of the time. But the boy was dashing and smart and funny, and he somehow considered Peter a friend. So maybe they were just jokes, even if they made him nervous to open his mouth. And maybe this was the price to play for running with James and Sirius, the two titans of the school. 

He couldn’t help that his words were clumsy and awkward, that they tripped off his tongue before he could really control them. He couldn’t help that he was never sure of what to do in social situations, so that he often ended up staring blankly at the end of a joke, or laughing too loud at what turned out to be a mere statement. 

“You ready, Pete?” James had always been kinder, but he was especially kind this year. Something seemed to have changed in him over the summer. Maybe it was just the slow progress of maturity, or maybe it was a conscious attempt to better himself. Whatever the case, James had been particularly empathetic with Peter this semester, and had rarely indulged in any of the pranks and tricks Sirius so often proposed. 

“Oh, yeah. Ready as I’ll ever be, I reckon.” The transformation still terrified him. Sirius was showy enough that he’d turn into the dog in their dormitory. Chase his tail, roll on his back, burrow into Remus’s bedcovers—to the other boy’s chagrin. Peter saved his transformation for only moon nights, and even then, the shifting and shrinking of his bones sent him into a mini panic. What if he got so wrapped up in the rat’s mind that he forgot how to turn back into himself? What if he was stuck that way forever, with his hairless tail and his scattered little paws? 

“Well, I’ll meet you guys in the dormitory after dinner,” Sirius muttered. “I have a new curse I want to try out on someone… Has anyone seen Snivelly oozing about?” 

“Be careful,” James warned. “Don’t get detention.” 

Sirius was already gone. James watched his receding figure with a little frown. “He’s going to do something he regrets,” he muttered, more to himself than to any audience. 

“He always pulls through,” Peter piped. Because just then, he believed it. Neither of them had any inkling of what Sirius was about to do—the moment of anger that would send Severus to the passage by the willow, James’s breakneck run through the passage in order to stop the prank that was really more of a catastrophe. That after this night, everything would change for all of them. That all of the trust between them was not as strong as they might have assumed that mistakes could edge on unforgiveable.


	10. Winter, Sixth Year (Sirius)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius does not know how to atone; Remus does not know how to forgive.

Nearly every night that December, Sirius borrowed James’s cloak and wandered the castle alone. Instead of comforting him, the dark and familiar hallways seemed more of a torment. Every turn, he hoped to see Remus out on his prefect’s rounds. Some nights, he would see the boy trudging along, tired, sad. Sirius would flatten himself up on a wall, breathing quietly as the boy passed. Sometimes he would follow for a few steps, trailing like a ghost. But he never pulled the cloak off, and he never spoke out.

Peter had been easiest, in the end, to grant forgiveness. Friendship was such a necessity to him that he’d forgiven Sirius without ever really considering it. James had come along slowly, though he was still stern. But Remus had all but disappeared. He didn’t join them for dinners, didn’t gang up for trips to Hogsmeade. In class, he sat as far away as he could. The only signs that he even still shared a dormitory were the rumpled bedclothes each morning—he returned after everyone had gone to sleep, and woke up before everyone else. 

Sirius missed him with a constant, painful, knife-in-his-side sort of ache. And the problem was, he’d missed him even before the stupid stunt with Severus. Because they’d ended things a week before that, in an argument studded with words like _shame_ and _truth_ and _look me in the eye, why can’t you look me in the eye._

He walked along now, unconcerned about how loud his boots were on the flagstones. The cloak seemed so much smaller than it used too—he had to hunch slightly to make sure his soles were obstructed. There was a stained glass window near the Divination Tower, and he’d taken a liking to standing where the colored panes of glass sent down a kaleidoscope of light. 

How could he explain to Remus why he’d done it when he couldn’t even explain it to himself? The truth was, over their months together, the secret of _them_ had weighed him down heavier and heavier. He thought he could handle the deception, but in the end he couldn’t look Remus in the face, couldn’t even say his name without a slight grimace. 

But he hadn’t wanted it to end.

So when Remus said “This isn’t working,” his only retaliation had been to reveal one of Remus’s secrets as well. 

He was so preoccupied in his walking that he almost didn’t see the silhouette by the window until he was right upon it. Filch? No, too small. A professor? No. No, he knew the slope of those shoulders anywhere. 

Remus was standing in front of the window, lit by the torches to either side of the glass, hands behind his back like he was surveying a painting at a museum. 

Sirius stood for a moment, holding his breath, staring towards the boy so hard he was amazed Remus couldn’t feel the burn of his eyes. Then, he turned to leave, but— 

“Why’ve you been following me?” 

He froze. Who was Remus talking to? He couldn’t know Sirius was here, he was fully under the cloak, and yet— 

“Sirius, I’m talking to you. I can smell you.” 

He’d forgotten. How had he forgotten? How good Remus’s sense of smell was, that he could gauge from Sirius’s breath what he’d had for lunch the day before. They’d made a game of it, once. Now, forgetting that game had given him away. 

He pulled the cloak off in surrender. “I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said honestly. “I just came to think.” It was hard to speak, really, when Remus was looking him in the eye for the first time in months. And not looking in burning, speechless anger—which had passed in those first few weeks—but in a soft, sad, disappointed look that stung even worse. “What are you doing here?” 

“Same thing.” 

They stood silently, yards apart. Remus shuffled from foot to foot, put his hands in his pockets. 

“Are you ever going to talk to me again?” Sirius asked. 

The silence that continued to stretch was a good enough answer. 

“Why should I?” Remus finally said. 

“You probably shouldn’t.” They both looked down to the floor—the dim flagstones warmed by the torches on the walls. “But. I think we’re both unhappy.” 

Remus let out a dry little laugh. “Do you even know why I’m unhappy, Sirius?” 

“I didn’t mean for it to go so far.” 

“Didn’t mean for it to go so far?” His voice was gaining strength. “Didn’t mean to almost kill three people?" 

"I--what? Three?" 

" I would have murdered them, Sirius. And if I had, I would have killed myself.” Remus stepped forward, fists clenched, and for the first time in their six years of friendship Sirius saw the gleam of the wolf in his human eyes. 

“You wouldn’t have—“ 

“You underestimate what I’m capable of.” Remus strode forward to pass him, to leave him standing alone in the corridor. But Sirius’s body rebelled—without even thinking, he reached out to wrap his arm around Remus’s middle, to pull the boy back and keep him from leaving. 

A hard elbow cracked into his skull. He squeezed tighter, pulled Remus down to the ground. A crash of stone against his knees, the feel of fists poundings into his side, the give of a body receiving his own blows. They rolled across the corridor, quiet save for the sound of punches and muffled groans. Sirius could taste blood from a split lip. His head was pounding from the fall, the leg of his trousers was ripped and his knee was bleeding. And he didn’t back down, because at least now Remus recognized that he was there. 

His head cracked the stone floor again as Remus held him down, pinning his shoulder painfully to the ground. Remus had never really wrestled with the others, even when they were younger and such tussles had been common, and Sirius was surprised by the boy’s strength. 

Holding him down with a hand on either shoulder, Remus leaned down to stare him in the eyes. Sirius was hyperaware of everything—the flicker of flame on the walls around them, reflected in Remus’s eyes; the salt tang of blood from his split lip; the ragged sound of their out-of-sync breaths. A bruise bloomed on Remus’s cheek. New scars were on his face—their patterns were always changing, never set, but they’d grown worse in the months he’d refused the Marauder’s company during his transformations. 

Remus knelt down, straddling his chest, breathing heavily from his nostrils. He leaned further, until they were nose to nose and each breath fell hot in the others' face. Then Remus was kissing him mercilessly, viciously. A swirl of blood and saliva, a flash of pain as his shoulder bones were pressed tight to stone. Then the weight was lifted from his chest, and Remus was standing to wipe a smear of red from his own mouth. He looked down for a long moment at Sirius sprawled on the floor, surprised and submissive, then he turned to walk away from the glow of the torches, to where the corridor turned away into darkness and Sirius would not dare to follow.


	11. Spring, Sixth Year (Remus)

The spring thaw didn’t come gently and pleasantly, full of new flowers and gentle breezes. It hit as suddenly and violently as the first brutal snowfall of the winter. One afternoon, the ground was full of sloping white cold. The next, Remus was knee-deep in mud as he slogged to the greenhouse. An hour later, after harvesting puffapods until his brain hurt, he made it outside. Even the air hadn’t taken on the promise of spring warmth. There seemed to be no promises lately, anyway. Maybe things wouldn’t thaw. Maybe the sun wouldn’t return. Maybe everything would be muddy and cold forever.

He struggled his way across the grounds—not towards the castle but towards the Quidditch pitch. All winter, he’d been stuck revisiting the same corridors in the castle and the same arguments in his head. After the tension had come to a point when he and Sirius met that December night, things settled a bit. He came to lunch every once in awhile, or walked with them to Hogsmeade to replenish his stock of sugar quills and chocolate bars. He even allowed the Marauders to join him again on full moons-- Padfoot and the wolf were civil but distant. So were Remus and Sirius. They didn’t look each other in the eye or allow themselves to touch, even in accident. They used to be aware of each other in an electric way. Now, they were still aware of each other, but any exhilaration was gone. 

Being alone was double-edged. He liked to spend time alone, to organize his thoughts. But he’d been spending so much time in solitude that he was getting wrapped up in his own head. He tried his hardest to not think of Sirius, which meant he ended up thinking of him more than ever. Thinking of him in anger was common, of course, but remembering everything they’d lost was worse. 

He’d taken up smoking cigarettes—just another secret he was forced to keep. But he liked this one because it belonged to only him. Each time he snuck out to the gates or leaned out of the empty astronomy tower window to breath smoke into the cold night air, he felt like he was at least in control of one thing. 

He huddled behind the shed, cupping his hand around the tip of his cigarette and lighting it with his wand. That first inhalation—the burning down his throat into his lungs, the first tendrils of smoke curling from his nostrils. Sure, it was bad for him, but what wouldn’t? A few weeks ago he’d discovered an old, broken-spined book in the restricted section of the library with a passage on lycanthropy, and he’d read about how most werewolves are killed in transformation by the time they’re forty. 

He hadn’t told anyone about this. He’d tried very hard to not dwell on it, but it lingered in the peripherals, a light burning always just to the side of his vision. He thought of the way the skin on his back kit back together each month, a jagged line down the ridges of his spine. According to the book, if left to transform long enough, the skin would grow weaker and thinner until it refused to fully heal. 

He would die. 

He thought about it when he woke up. When he ate eggs and toast in the great hall. He would die. When he began daydreaming in classes, and all of the sudden the panic got so bad that he needed to excuse himself to the bathroom just to catch his breath. When he went on his prefect’s rounds in the quiet castle. He would die, he would die, he would die. 

This realization was always near him, but now as he puffed at his cigarette he let it take him over. There were no tears, no shaking hands. Just this quick, painful realization of his own mortality. He wasted a moment considering the unfairness, but that never got him anywhere. He stared upwards at the smoke curling into the afternoon sky, wishing everything he worried about could dissipate like the fumes in the breeze. 

The sound of boots squelching in mud, a quick curse. 

He knew the sound of that voice anywhere. Sirius was coming around the shed. 

He considered dropping the cigarette, grinding it into the mud with his heel. He stiffened with anger—why was Sirius trying to take this, the one secret he had left? But it was too late, and he would have felt immature pretending that neither of them noticed the smoke hanging in the air. So as Sirius stepped around the shed, grimacing at the mud that clung to his expensive boots, Remus just took a long drag. 

They stared towards each other, silence pulling them down like the mud at their feet. “You smoke?” Sirius finally said. Remus answered the rhetorical question with a slow exhale, watching the shaped that curved in blue-gray from his lips. Sirius’s eyes were wide, his hands were shoved deep into his favorite old bomber jacket. Remus thought for a moment that the boy seemed scared, but that had to be impossible, because Sirius was never scared. 

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, a bit blunt. But he didn’t feel like being very welcoming, because he’d hidden out behind the pitch for the sole reason of being alone, and now Sirius had ruined something else. 

“I just, uh,” he glanced back towards the castle, as if he suddenly regretted ever leaving it. “I came to speak with you.” 

“How’d you know I was here?” 

“Looked it up on the map, didn’t I?” 

Remus turned away, face slightly flushed with the realization that Sirius had gone out of his way to find him. Did he have something important to say? His stomach clenched unpleasantly. 

“What is it?” 

“It’s… nothing.” 

“It must not be nothing, if you came all the way out here to speak with me.” 

“It really is nothing! It’s just that I was watching your little dot pacing round the grounds, and I wanted to speak with you so badly that I almost started muttering to the map. And I felt so crazy that I had to come out here and find you and speak to you face to face, even if I have nothing to say, because I can’t go another minute without saying something, anything, to you.” They were both shocked. Sirius had the distinct look on his face that showed he hadn’t planned on saying all of that, or maybe any of it at all. 

What was there to say? Remus inhaled again, closed his eyes. There was so much anger knotted up inside him, and so much fear. “I’ve wanted to talk with you too.” His voice cracked. 

Sirius took a few steps closer, lingered awkwardly. “Maybe I can work out a good memory charm, or we can get so drunk we forget about everything. Because I want to move forward, and…” Remus kept his eyes closed, and made no move to finish the sentence for him. This was Sirius’s atonement—that he would babble on incoherently, feeling more and more foolish by the moment. 

“And I can’t imagine moving forward without you as my friend, or… or…” 

Remus stayed quiet, though it pained him. He wasn’t sure if he could talk even if he wanted to. 

“Or anything else you choose to be,” Sirius finished lamely. 

Five months since the prank—Remus still thought of it as "the prank," even though it had been so much more sinister than the words conveyed. Six months since Remus had ended it between them. Sirius’s shame had been too heavy. He’d been increasingly rough, increasingly drunk, increasingly silent and moody and hurtful. Remus knew, deep down, it had nothing to do with him. But he hadn’t had the strength to carry both of them. And Sirius had proved all of his worries right with that move, when he went to Severus and… and… he couldn’t even imagine those moments, the day it happened, the week that stretched out after. 

He could feel the ache inside his chest, though. The ache that had been there for six months, a hollow piece where Sirius had been missing. 

“I don’t know if I can, Sirius.” He could be honest—it was the only strength he had the energy for. He opened his eyes finally, blinking in the sunlight. Sirius stood a few feet away, turned towards the castle so that his profile was in view. His dark hair fell over his eyes, and the ghost of stubble stretched down his neck. 

“I’ll be better,” Sirius said. “I’ll try to be better. I will. For you.” 

Remus inhaled audibly though his nose, a quick intake of breath that made it sound like he’d been physically hurt. He flicked the ash from his cigarette, watching it float down to the wet ground. He couldn’t stop staring at Sirius, and he was glad the boy wouldn’t look his way. “Have you ever smoked a cigarette?” he finally asked. 

Sirius’s laugh sounded brittle. “Yes. You know that. You’ve been with me when I have.” 

“Yes, but have you really _smoked_ a cigarette?” Remus took a step closer, holding his hand out. When Sirius turned to take the cigarette their fingers brushed and both of them stared away. 

“I guess you need to tell me how to smoke. I think I must be missing something.” 

“Okay… Pull it up to your lips but don’t inhale quite yet…” Remus poised his empty fingers in front of his mouth, a nonchalant charade. “Press it up to your lips and breath in real slow… slower… and right when you think you’re running out of lung space, breath in real sharp—yeah, like that! And the whole time, you have to feel every trickle of smoke in your throat and your lungs. And you have to love that it burns a little. And you have to love it because you know it’s so bad for you, that it can hurt you. You have to know those things, and not just accept them, but enjoy it because of them.” 

Their eyes burned into each others, as hot as the embers at the tip of the cigarette pressed to Sirius’s mouth. Then Sirius was exhaling, and the push of the breath pulled them together. Arms wrapped tight around each other, bodies pressed as tight as they could be. Great, gasping breaths, as if their lungs had been constricted and were only just let free. Sirius dropped the cigarette. 

No kiss, not yet. Just this bracing contact, the two of them swaying against each other, anchored for an instant as the world rotated around them. In the mud, the cigarette gave a last desperate glimmer before it was stamped out by Remus’s foot.


	12. Summer, Sixth Year (James)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James starts up a summer correspondence.

By the end of the term, James seemed to be eating meals alone a lot. Meal times had always been set aside for the four marauders, but for the last few weeks it seemed at least one person had been missing from every meal. He supposed this was a part of growing up—that they all had other commitments and things keeping them busy, but it still stung to have to sit alone spooning hash browns at breakfast this morning. A group of first years were sitting to the left of him, laughing too loudly at the Sunday comics section of the _Daily Prophet._ Though James had snorted out loud at the moving square of an Emerald Green wearing a brassiere himself, he shot them a stony look just for good measure.

Lily was at the other end, also eating alone—he was always aware of where she was and what she was doing, even if he didn’t mean to be. The color red had some magical property over him—it sharpened his senses, made him focus. She was picking, disheartened, through a plate of eggs. To anyone else, she was wearing a Sunday uniform of an old green flannel shirt and a faded grey skirt. But James had noticed, in the four seconds he’d allowed himself to stare, that the green plaid really brought out the color of her eyes. 

Then he’d looked away. Lily hadn’t willingly had anything to do with him all year, and though he still couldn’t allow himself to totally give up his feelings for her, he realized that liking her that much meant the best thing was to just leave her alone. 

“What’s that saying, if you love her set her free?” Sirius had asked one night two weeks ago in the dormitory. “Isn’t that some bung Muggle phrase, Remus? Take her out to the woods and set her free or something?” 

“As usual, your knowledge of muggle studies astounds me,” Remus had rolled his eyes. 

“It’s just…” James had struggled to explain himself. “It’s just that I’ve liked her for so long, and I’ve liked her so much, that… I want her to be happy. And if making her happy means me leaving her alone, then…” He shrugged, looking miserable. Sirius had rolled his eyes and gone on a tirade about the flaws of Lily Evans and the merits of every other girl at Hogwarts. Remus had watched him carefully for a few seconds, then had leaned over to squeeze his shoulder in a way that had felt affirming and comforting all at once. 

Now, a few owls floated through the window, lazily circling over the hall. Post wasn’t common on Sundays, and James knew from the feather patterns splayed across the stormy hall ceiling that they were all school owls. Nothing to do with him. He’d managed to stay out of trouble for almost the entirety of the school year—not by any conscious effort, really, but by the fact that their old jokes and pranks just seemed like too much work. 

A flutter of gray and black feathers by the porridge bowl. James stared, shocked, at the barn own that clicked its beak imperiously at him. He reached out for the official Hogwarts envelope, always the same thick yellow parchment, and glanced down the table to see Lily grasping an identical one. As the owl flew back towards the open window, he slid his thumb under the envelope flap and felt the glue give under the pull of his finger. 

He slid the parchment out, unfolded it on the table, and read: 

_Congratulations, James Potter,_

Due to your academic excellence and history of involvement at Hogwarts School, you have been selected as Head Boy for the following year— 

There was more following, but he was too shocked to read down to Dumbledore’s signature. He looked up to Lily, and could see a similar gleam in her green eyes as she unfolded the parchment. 

His parents would be so proud! Sirius would be so disappointed! He actually laughed out loud, and the noise caught Lily’s attention. She held her parchment up towards him, eyebrows kit together in confusion that clearly said “You too?” He just nodded, eyes crinkling with his smile. A few years ago, he would have scoffed at this letter the same way he scoffed when Remus first got his silver prefect’s badge. Now, however, it felt good to be recognized. 

Lily was standing up, straightening her skirt to leave—but she wasn’t heading towards the door, she was walking towards him. And all he could do was nervously flatten his hair, run a hand over his face for any stray strips of hash browns or smears of ketchup, curse himself for not shaving— 

“You too, Potter?” She held up her letter, eyebrows raised. 

“Yeah… I guess the school’s finally really gone mental…” He grinned up at her, still rubbing a hand up over his hair as if he’d just gotten smashed in the skull with something heavy and unexpected. “Two Gryffindors heading this year… We’ve made our house proud.” 

She smiled thinly, still staring down at the parchment as if she thought it might all be some sort of prank. “Yes. Well. I suppose you know enough about trouble-making to somehow become a good role model.” 

He let his hand fall from his scalp, folding it with the other on top of the table. “Well, I know enough to keep you in line…” 

Miraculously, Lily Potter laughed. At a joke he’d made. 

The world stopped spinning, the wind stopped blowing, the annoying first years down the table stopped making newspaper airplanes fly on the updraft of their wands. In short, everything froze in place. 

“Well, congratulations, Potter…” She turned to leave, folding the letter to put in the side of her messenger bag. She was two steps away when he called out, without planning what he was going to say or allowing him time to consider the repercussions. 

“Evans?” 

“Yeah?” She whirled around, her hair flying around her shoulders, her lips still parted with the word she’d just sent his way. Before his heart stopped and his lungs closed up, he forced the question out. 

“Can I write you this summer?” 

She looked him over critically, eyes narrowed and lips pursed. He’d been a fool. He should have stayed quiet and kept it to himself, he couldn’t take this rejection any more, he was going to dig a hole out in the forest and curl up into it until next term and--- 

“Yeah, I guess that’d be alright.” 

“Yeah?” 

She laughed—she laughed! “Yeah, Potter. Yeah.” They smiled at each other for just a second—the best second of his life—and then she really was leaving. 

He waited exactly a minute—counted out sixty careful seconds—then jumped up to sprint to Gryffindor Tower. By the time he got to the door, he was breathless and flushed, but he came exploding into the room with a steady stream of anxieties that took a surprised Remus and Sirius five full minutes to untangle. 

“She said you could write her?” Sirius asked, incredulously. 

“Yeah, she said I could… She said I could!” 

“Why on earth did she say you could?” 

“I dunno… cause… cause… Oh, oh yeah! I’m head boy!” 

“What?” This time it was Remus turning with wide eyes. “You were made head boy, and you started off with 'Evans said I could write to her?'” 

“Hold on, you’re head boy? This is all very disappointing!” 

“Dissa-bloody-pointing! I’ve never felt so alive!” James forced himself between the two of them on the edge of Remus’s bed, spreading his arms over each of their shoulders. “What will I write her first?” 

“Luckily, you have a few weeks before the start of the summer. You can work out a few drafts,” Remus pointed out. “I’ll check your spelling if you want.” 

“Might as well start out with a proposal,” Sirius rolled his eyes. 

“No, no, you guys… You’re not taking this seriously. What am I going to write to her?” 

Thus began the first major crisis of James Potter’s life.

\------- 

Dear Lily— 

This is the first line of my letter. This is the second line. This is a joke I’m throwing in so that you think I’m not too serious. Here are the clichéd questions every summer letter has to include: How is your summer going? Has your family been on vacation to anyway? In Muggle Studies 101, I learned this list—the beach, the zoo, the grocery store. Does that sound about right? I dropped it after two sessions, so I’m really not sure. 

In all non-cliché reality, I do hope you’re having a good summer. And I really hope you’ll write me back. 

This is how I wrap up my letter, 

James 

Potter— 

The mechanics of your letter were intriguing, to say the least. If you end up dropping out of Hogwarts in the next year, you can probably be a famous poet. Or at least a starving one. 

Have you started preparing for your Head Boy responsibilities next year? I’ve started keeping a binder. I’m sure you’re not as concerned about organization—my sister Petunia’s given me a hard time—but I like to be on top of things at least for the beginning. 

I don’t have too much to say about muggle vacations this year, as we’re not going on one. I’ve been spending most afternoons reading books, brewing iced tea and taking walks with my parent’s dog. It’s actually a relief to write. I’m sure I won’t be saying that next term when I have all of those seventh year essays to write. 

~Lily 

Lily— 

I hope my jokes prompt more than just some polite laughter, or worse, a not-so-polite eye roll. I base everything I know about Muggle life from Remus’s endless prattling. He always talks a lot about whatever he’d nervous about, and last year he was nervous about Muggle studies so he was always prattling on. I tended to tune him out, to be honest, which is probably why I haven’t the faintest idea of what muggles might do on vacation. I’m sorry you’re not going anywhere this summer, unless you’re not really sorry, in which case I say congratulations. I hope you’ve had many cozy summer dates with your books and your pen pals (of which I’m happy to be included). ~James 

Potter, 

Are you insinuating that these letters count as a date? Because I’m sorry, but you haven’t been too impressive so far. No candles? No wine? I pegged you for all of the first date clichés. 

Lily 

Lily— 

You sent that poor owl all the way here for five sentences? A pair of which were only two words long? It’s exhausted. In fact, I think it’s angry that I’m sending this note with it right now. 

James


	13. Autumn, Seventh Year (Sirius)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius takes a walk in the rain. Remus comes to find him.

Rain fell in an endless drizzle that September, from the moment Sirius arrived with James at King’s Cross until today, the last of the month. He’d given up on umbrellas and hoods. There was a certain satisfaction in the miserable cling of his wet leather jacket, the way his hair gathered into sopping bunches that he pushed back from his face.

He was seventeen, a man in the wizarding world, and he’d never felt so out of place

. James had abandoned him for Quidditch, Head Boy duties and the avid pursuit of Lily Evans. Remus was so wrapped up in studies and post-graduation anxieties that they’d barely been alone together all term. Even Peter had found a girlfriend, a Hufflepuff with good intentions and an annoying giggle. 

There was the problem of his parents. The fact that he’d finally left, with nothing but his levitated trunk and the cloak on his back. The fact that they hadn’t tried to stop him. 

The secret sting of those truths. He would never have stayed, but he would have liked to think that some part of them wanted him too. 

He cut across the lawn, walking along the dark edge of the forest. If any professor caught him, he’d get a telling off for meandering into out-of-bounds grounds. But the forest held no fright anymore. He knew it better than anyone—except the other Marauders—and walking in the shadow of the trees gave him a sort of peace. 

He’d been drinking a lot. It passed the time more quickly—the hours he spent alone avoiding homework or skipping out on class. His grades would not suffer—he was beyond needing to try these days, because without putting any effort forth, he’d get along just fine. (“Think of what you could do if you actually tried!” Remus had encouraged him a few weeks ago. “Think of all you’ve already achieved, with barely even trying!” It had done no good. Sirius had just gone to sleep.) 

The truth was, he was tired. Exhausted. Something inside of him felt broken and sore, and he wondered if this was how Remus felt on the floor of the shack at the end of each moon. But he was Sirius Black, his very charm came from his unfaltering humor, his lack of emotions. He rummaged in the inside pocket of his cloak, pulled out the refillable silver flask James had given him for his fourteenth birthday. 

“Padfoot!” 

It was Remus, of course it was Remus. No one else had such an uncanny skill for finding him when he wandered off on his own. 

“Moony…” He turned, wiping a few flecks of fire whiskey from his lips. “It’s raining, you know. You’ll catch your death of cold.” 

Remus wore an old grey jacket, one no doubt inherited from James, with elbow patches worn until the leather cracked. The rain flattened his hair to his scalp, and as he pushed it back, it was clear how much more gray had grown prematurely at his temples. 

“I saw you from the astronomy tower,” he said softly. “Mapping cloud patterns up there… They look insane from the telescope.” 

Sirius looked overhead at the flat expanse of grey sky. “They look like shit from down here.” 

“You looked like shit from up there,” Remus countered. “And you kind of look like shit from here.” 

Sirius let out a bark of laughter. “This is how you come to cheer me up?” 

“I know you appreciate honesty.” 

“Have a drink?” 

Remus assented, taking a deep drag. 

“I always like that about you,” Sirius said softly, watching the way Remus’s lips closed around the flask. “You can hold your liquor.” 

Remus passed the flask back, frowning. “It’s a side effect of running with you all. I need a stuff drink every now and then just to keep sane.” 

“Do you think we drink too much?” “Yes.” 

They were joking, and they were not. Sirius pocketed the flask, feeling the whiskey warming up from his stomach so that the cold of the rain was bearable. Or maybe it was Remus walking near him that made the weather, the grey sky, the mud clinging to their boots all seem alright. The skirted the edge of trees for a few quiet minutes. Without discussing it, they darted into the shadow, surrounded now by the tree trunks darker in the wet and the smell of moist earth. 

“Forest used to scare me,” Sirius muttered. “It never scared me,” Remus responded. “Nothing out here worse than I am.” 

Sirius reached out without thinking, found Remus’s hand, laced their fingers together. “Remember that summer at James’s?” 

“Mmm.” 

“I think that may have very well been the best time of my life.” 

Remus gave his hand a squeeze. “We were young. Too young. When you’re fifteen, you don’t really even know what happiness is. Or fear, or loss, or any of it.” 

They were silent in their wandering, stepping in unison over a broken log, refusing to let go of each other’s hands. 

“Or maybe we knew more then, and we’ve forgotten.” Sirius stopped under the wide-spread canopy of an oak tree, where only a few drops of water made it through the dense branches. 

Remus turned, smiled in the way that was only a mask. “Maybe that’s all growing up is, then. Forgetting about things that are important.” 

Sirius pressed his free hand to the curve of his face. “Maybe we just have to try very hard to remember,” he muttered. 

“Sirius…” Remus’s lips, viewed from up close, were bruised and chapped. His bottom lip was fuller than the top—Sirius knew this, yet he always took the time to notice it—and just the hint of stubble ridged the top one. His lips were parted, his partially crooked front tooth was peeking out, he was about to say something important—some epiphany, maybe, something that would make it all make sense. “You’re very drunk.” Then Remus was leaning in and kissing him softly, putting both hands on his shoulders to straighten his leather jacket. He leaned back, toyed with the zipper, then slipped it all the way up to Sirius’s neck. 

“Well, maybe you should be drunker,” Sirius said. 

“Maybe I should,” he laughed. 

“Have another go…” 

Remus accepted the flask without arguing and took two deep pulls, followed by a shallow cough. “We’ve grown up too quick, hmm?” 

“Hm.” 

“But the thing is, Padfoot… We’re good. I think that’s what matters. We’re good, and we’re brave… we’re funny. Those things are important. They have to be important.” 

Sirius kept his eyes closed. He swayed slightly, reached out and steadied his arms on Remus’s shoulders. “You’re all those things,” he muttered. “I’m not so sure about myself.” 

“I’m sure enough for the both of us,” Remus said softly. He reached out, pushed a strand of hair from Sirius’s forehead. “I wouldn’t be standing out here in the rain with you if I wasn’t.” 

“I want to be better,” he muttered—slurred, more likely. “I keep messing up. I don’t mean to, but I do…” He hadn’t said these things to anyone, these worries and anxieties he so often circled in his brain. But Remus had a way of drawing out admissions the way someone drew venom from a wound. “I left home… I’ve been a waste of space. Haven’t done anything—haven’t been brave, haven’t been good…” He was sober enough to know that he was babbling incoherently, and drunk enough to not be able to stop. 

“Shh…” Remus leaned in, silenced him with his lips. A branch overhead creaked, and a cascade of water fell over both of them, but neither flinched or pulled away. “You’re doing the best you can, Sirius. You’re doing so good.” 

Those words. No one had said them to him in a very long time, maybe ever. He felt dizzy, and he leaned into Remus, breathing in deep the smell of soap and peppermint that emanated from his wet clothes. He would not cry—he would never permit himself to go that far—but he could breath in deep, shaky gasps and steady himself on this other body. 

They would be okay. They would keep trying. They would forge forward, and believe in things, and work towards things. And whenever he was out walking in the rain, he would trust that somehow, wherever he was, Remus would come to find him.


	14. Winter, Seventh Year (Peter)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter's new girlfriend doesn't like the Marauders, and he doesn't know what to do.

Darlene. It’s the most beautiful word he’d ever said. The thud of the D at the tip of his tongue, the growl of the R, the clean wrap up of the N. Peter found himself whispering it at odd times—with a mouth full of toothpaste in front of the mirror, or into his roast beef sandwich at the lunch table. He wrote it on the margins of his parchment, or on strips of paper he shredded afterwards with a red face when he considered Sirius discovering it.

The most miraculous thing was that she seemed to feel the same way. There was a certain hypnotic hum to the way she said his name—Peter, always with the R, unless she fell into Petey, also increasingly common. Everything she did was hypnotic, really. The way she walked into charms class, the way she held his hand, the way she kissed. For the first time in history, Peter had a girlfriend and every other marauder was single (minus, possibly, Remus and Sirius, though he always avoided thinking of that.) 

Now, he couldn’t stop watching her eat her bacon. They were both sitting sideways at the Gryffindor table, mooning at each other over the breakfast platter. Sirius sat on the opposite side, holding his stomach as if he was about to vomit. “Oh, Merlin, if you insist on staring at each other like that can you at least sit on opposite sides of the table?” 

Peter didn’t even bother turning away to respond. “If you find us so offensive, why do you keep staring?” 

Darlene giggled, raised a hand to fluff her perfect blond curls. Sirius blanched at the sound of her laugh. “How can I tear my eyes away? It’s like a train wreck. It’s like the Hogwarts Express crashed into the Whomping Willow, and the Giant Squid got all tangled in with his wet, sloppy tentacles.” 

“Don’t pay him any mind, love,” Peter reached out to tap a finger on her cheek, causing another fit of giggling. “He’s just jealous, he hasn’t had a proper snog since fifth year.” Sirius snorted, picked up a dry piece of toast, and made for the exit. “Have fun acting like a pair of sexually frustrated second years,” he called over his shoulder. Peter just rolled his eyes, smiling at Darlene’s pout. 

“I don’t like your friends much, Peter,” she said. 

“Ah, well…” He reached out for a sausage link and chewed thoughtfully. “Sirius doesn’t go for the best first impressions.” 

“Or the second, or the third,” she crossed her arms over her chest, frowning towards the empty doorway. “How long have we been dating, Petey?” 

“Just goin’ on two months, love.” 

“And not once has Sirius been decent to me. I don’t see why you run around with him at all. He’s a proper terror.” 

“Aw, you have to get to know him…” He popped the rest of the sausage into his mouth, though he’d lost the pleasure of eating. He didn’t like this conversation at all. It felt like betrayal, really, to talk about Sirius behind his back. “Besides, James and Remus are perfectly fine. They like you!” 

She sighed, turning her attention back from the door to his face. “I just don’t like to share you, is all." She reaching both hands forward to straighten his collar. 

He laughed, broad face spreading into a wide smile. “Aw, don’t worry about them, Dar. You’re my number one girl, you know that.” 

That placated her, for now. She reached out to take his hand. “Want to go on a walk? It’s a bit cold, but I can go get my boots.” 

“I’ll keep you warm,” he offered, wrapping an arm around her shoulder as they walked towards the Hufflepuff common room entrance. It was awkward to walk that way—Darlene was a few inches taller than him, so he had to walk on the balls of his feet to reach up comfortably—but they were young and in love so every misfit step was worth it. \-- 

“Oh, come on, Peter. Hufflepuff girls are only good for one thing.” Sirius was sprawled across Remus’s bed, tossing little bits of paper into the air. With a lazy flick of his wand, he set them on fire and extinguishing them before they hit the floor. Outside of the window, snowflakes hit the glass audibly. 

“Sirius, stop.” Remus whirled from his desk. “Stop making fun of Peter, stop making the room smell like bloody smoke, stop getting your muddy boots all over my comforter.” 

Peter’s face was as hot as the smoldering bits of paper on the floor. He appreciated Remus’s support. The boy had been increasingly forceful with his friends lately, especially Sirius, and Peter would have liked to take his maturity as inspiration for sticking up for himself as well. But he’d taken grief from Sirius for so long that he could never seem to find his voice. 

“Merlin, Remus, you need to take a nap.” Sirius lay back on the bed, spreading his arms wide as if he were making a snow angel in the rumpled sheets. 

“Why don’t you ever lay on your own bed anymore?” 

“Yours is always so much cleaner. I found a bit of salami in mine last week…” 

Remus made a gagging noise and turned back to his homework, shaking his head. “I am so afraid for you to graduate,” he muttered, scratching something out with his quill. 

Peter pulled his knees up to his chest from his spot on the carpet, hoping the attention had shifted from him for good. His main defense mechanism had become waiting out the storm. Eventually, Sirius would get tired of taunting him and would move onto another activity—usually frustrating Remus. But today he was out of luck. Unperturbed by Remus’s comments, Sirius turned back to Peter with an unpleasant leer. “Oh, c’mon, Petey. Give us all the dirty details. What’s she been up to that makes you so happy?” 

Peter’s face flushed brighter red as he gnawed a fingernail. When he was around Darlene, he had no doubts about their relationship. But when she was gone and Sirius was grilling him, he felt somehow ashamed. He wished there was a way to keep his romantic life and his friends completely separate, but Sirius took a savage joy in butting into his business whenever possible. 

“J-just let it go, Sirius,” he stammered. He turned towards the window, where frost had cracked in a complicated pattern on the glass, like a tree full of intricate branches spreading over a transparent canvas. 

“Let it go? Is that what you told Darlene when she was wanking you off and you got too nervous?” 

James could play these games—this teenage banter full of innuendo and dirty jokes. He would have passed it off with a laugh. Remus would have just rolled his eyes and scowled at Sirius with his quiet dignity. But Peter had never learned how to keep up with Sirius. Usually, tagging along with the boy just left him breathless. 

But he’d discovered a new defense mechanism lately. He could walk away. 

Sirius’s eyebrows shot up as Peter’s feet his the floor. “Aw, c’mon Wormy, I’m just having a go…” 

Peter didn’t speak as he wrestled on his boots and found his winter cloak. He didn’t respond to Sirius’s excuses as the boy stood, shrugging abruptly and rolling his eyes towards Moony. He didn’t turn around as Remus whirled around and began yelling at Sirius— 

“We both told you to stop, and you just couldn’t, could you.” 

Peter stormed out as best as he could, though he didn’t have the guts to slam the door behind him. Down the hall, he could hear Remus yelling. Something was happening between them--Remus never used to yell like that--but he didn’t have the time or energy to try to solve that puzzle. 

He banged through the common room, ignoring James’s surprised “Peter?” as he strode towards the portrait hole. His graceful exit was ruined when he stumbled into the hallway, but he didn’t fall down, at least. Just walked faster, making it to the Hufflepuff entryway in record time and grabbing a second year girl who was just reaching the doorway. “Tell Darlene I’m outside, ‘eh?” 

So close to the kitchen, the smells of tomorrow’s breakfast baked goods wafted through the hall. He breathed in the smell of cinnamon and rising dough and began to calm down a little bit. Maybe they could sneak over to the kitchen, tickle the pear, have a few cinnamon buns before bed. 

The Hufflepuff tapestry shifted and Darlene came into the corridor, a fluffy yellow dressing robe over her pajamas. “Peter?” 

“Oh, were you going to bed?” “I was just studying.” 

“I was just… I just…” He felt foolish now, as if he’d overreacted, but he’d been so angry with Sirius that he’d just had to see her. “I just wanted to see you?” He held his empty hands out—all he had to offer was himself. Luckily, she laughed and stepped over, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. 

“Well that’s always nice to hear. Quick walk before curfew?” 

“That sounds lovely.” She shuffled next to him in her slippered feet, clinging to his arm in a way that made him feel important. He talked briefly about Sirius—nothing the boy has said, but how he’d made him angry. How Sirius was always making him angry, treating him as if he was a lesser friend, a lesser marauder. 

“Sometimes I don’t even know why I’m friends with him!” he burst out, face burning. Darlene squeezed his arm comfortingly. “It’s like they don’t even want me around…” 

“You should spend more time with people who do want you around.” 

“Exactly! I’ve been bloody wasting my time…” 

His stomach twisted uncomfortably. Again, he felt a sense of betrayal. Sirius had always treated him like this, and he’d never stuck up for himself before, never run off to talk behind his friends’ backs. Maybe he was the one who needed to change, because Sirius had always been the same. 

“I’ve never liked your friends, Peter. They all think they’re better than anyone else in this school.” 

“Yeah…” 

“Even that Remus Lupin can be a bit of a snob, he corrected me in herbology, as if that was Gryffindor’s special subject! I know more about that greenhouse than—“ 

He was scarcely listening now. Instead, he thought in terms of self-definition. Without the Marauders, who was he? He’d always defined himself by his friends, and without them, he was lost. His arm grew slack, and Darlene clung tighter. 

“Petey? What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing, nothing… I just need to go to bed, I think…” He let go of her arm, turned away before she could move in for a kiss. “I’ll see you soon, ‘eh? Breakfast, prob’ly…” And he walked back to the Gryffindor tower, mind surprisingly still for having just left his girlfriend alone somewhere in the cold, empty charms corridor.


	15. Spring, Seventh Year (James)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily's in his bedroom, and James can't believe his luck.

He watched Lily brushing her hair by the mirror, shaking out those long gold-and-red strands, pulling her fingers through them as if it was the most common thing in the world for her to be in his dormitory, wearing nothing but his button-up shirt, standing unabashed against the messy backdrop of the boys’ room. How had they gotten to this point? She still left him slightly out of breath, as if he’d just finished the first leg of a run. With that breathlessness also came a rush, though, like the endorphins that accompanied a particularly narrow Quidditch match.

He leaned back on his bed, propping himself up so he could still watch her in front of the mirror, slowly unfolding the moments that had led to this. Their summertime letters, the first nervous first date where he’d dumped a whole pot of hot tea on his lap ad damned Madame Puddifoot’s. The weeks that followed in a sort of hazy, disbelieving bliss. Because he could make Lily laugh, he lived to make Lily laugh. And in return she let him hold her hand, tentatively at first, but with growing confidence. 

She’d been the one to kiss him, one Hogsmeade afternoon when they lingered outside of the Shrieking Shack. When she pulled away, they’d exhaled in unison, and the ghosts of their breath had mingled in the cold air. “Well,” she’d smiled. Her face so pale, her lips so red. 

She’d been the one, today, to suggest they go all the way. He would have never pushed her, would have never even been brave enough to bring it up so soon. But that was the miraculous thing about Lily—she was unapologetic. She always talked about witches’ liberation, in being sure of her choices. She knew what she wanted. And she’d wanted him—even now, he couldn’t quite believe his luck. 

She turned, poising his hairbrush at her hip as she looked over him lounging on the bed in his boxers. “When are your roommates getting back?” 

“Not for awhile… They went to that extra apparition lesson, I think.” 

“What are you thinking about?” She grinned mischievously. 

“How lucky I am.” 

“You’re not lucky,” she countered, putting the hairbrush back on the desk and moving next to him on the mattress. “You’re stubborn. You worked way too hard to make me fall for you.” 

“The Potters are nothing if not dedicated. As my father always said---“ he trailed off suddenly, face flushing as he considered something she had just said. “You’re falling for me?” 

“Seems an odd thing for your father to ask you…” she leaned forward to kiss him. 

“No, I—I mean, you said…” 

“No, James Potter, I just fancied a good shag so I seduced you for seven months.” 

“Well, I hope it was worth it…” 

She shrugged. “It was alright.” 

“No! No! It was the best you ever had! It was all you’ve dreamed of in your womanly life! The mere sight of me makes you swoon, makes your knees go weak…” 

She laughed, leaned her body into his. “Yes. Your skill and talent has turned me into the heroine of a Jane Austen novel…” 

“Is that some Muggle thing?” 

She rolled her eyes, but James couldn’t see because she was nestling her head under his chin. “I swear, Remus is the only one who understands me…” 

“Well he’s the only one who gives a flobberworm's ass about Muggle Studies, isn’t he? Should I be worried about him?” 

“Oh, yes, he’s going to steal me away with his knowledge of telephones and escalators…” 

“Elephants and Alligators…” 

“Exactly…” They were both unwittingly drifting to sleep, tangled together under the hangings of his four-poster bed. Outside, the spring sun set over the first blush of green in the lawn, the buds opening up on the trees. Soon, they would be graduated. Who knew where they would be in two months’ time? The outside world was in terrible shape—it was impossible to ignore anymore. 

But that terror might be, James considered, what had pushed them together to begin with. There was so much uncertainty, so much fear. When you found something good, you clung to it. He tightened his arms around Lily and thought he could probably tell her anything—how scared he was to leave Hogwarts, how helpless he felt when he read _The Prophet_ each morning. How Dumbledore had called him to his office to talk about something called The Order of the Phoenix, a way to help, an army looking for young recruits. 

He would tell her all these things, yet. For now, he wanted to just lay with her, synching their breathing, wrapped up in the blankets and the smell of her hair. 

“I meant what I said, Potter,” she whispered against her chest. 

“Well, I mean it too,” he said. “I love you.” 

She laughed against the curve of his neck, and that was all the response he needed. For now, they needn’t worry about his roommates returning. They needn’t worry about the exams coming up, their grim post-graduation plans, the always-lingering fear of leaving Hogwarts for the real world. They just had to lie there, feeling all of the promise of the future contained between their two bodies.


	16. Summer, Seventh Year (Remus)

Remus sat at his desk, the same solid oak stretch he’d scratched and inked and fallen asleep across for the past seven years, running his palms over the familiar whorls of wood grain. The notes and charts and books for his final Defense Against the Dark Arts essay were spread over the surface, littered with dull pencils, old quills and paperclips twisted into tangles of useless wire.

His eyes were not on his homework, however, but on the window just ahead of him. The grounds stretched out, dreamlike in the sunset. The way the ball of the orange sun met the line of forest trees made their tops all look ablaze. From Gryffindor Tower, he could see the entire grounds—from the jewel-bright reflection of the lake to the shadowed border of the forest. 

He felt his insides swell up with premature nostalgia and a sort of urgent, greedy longing—the insatiable possession he felt over Hogwarts, as if the castle and grounds existed solely for himself. 

And in a week, he’d leave forever. Sure, he could come to visit perhaps, but it would never fully belong to him again. 

Graduation terrified him in a wordless, thoughtless way. To focus too closely on this fear would be to self-destruct. There were too many unknowns. Up until now, the war had always seemed as distant as the silhouetted hawk he now watched break off from the shadow of the forest. But every day, he could feel those dark wings beating closer and closer, until it was preening its feathers on his shoulder. 

He stiffened at the sound of boots dragging on flagstones. Behind him, Sirius came to the doorway, pale and miserable in a way that conveyed he’d recently committed a crime and expected to be punished. If he had been Padfoot, his tail would be between his legs. 

“What have you done?” he asked as Sirius hesitated at the threshold. Though he tried his best to sound exasperated and tired, goaded on by the discarded prefect’s badge glinting on the corner of his desk, a smile twitched just behind his lips. But Sirius didn’t fall into his usual dramatic explanations, hamming up his apologies for laughs just as much as forgiveness. Instead, he raised a shaking hand to press over his eyes. 

“What have you _done_?” Remus repeated, voice tight. Had he collapsed the astronomy tower? Set the owlery on fire? Finally succeeded at cursing Snape into a dung beetle? 

Sirius moved across the room fearfully, glancing up at Remus as if the boy were a predator and himself the nervous prey. “It was an accident…” 

“What have _you done_?” 

“I didn’t mean it to happen…” 

“ _What have you done?_ ” 

Sirius knelt down in front of him, head bowed in submission the way the dog sometimes lowered himself to the wolf. 

“Sirius.” Real fear knotted in Remus’s stomach now. This wasn’t the way they interacted, ever. 

“Filch caught me by the kitchens, told me to empty my pockets…” He dug his hands into his knees, staring at the grouting between the stones set in the floor. “I had the map. It was cleared, looked just like a bit of parchment when he picked it up, but I must have made a face or something because…” He faltered, wincing as if he expected Remus to hit him. 

And for a moment, he wanted nothing more than to feel Sirius’s cheek stinging beneath his palm. To make the boy hurt as suddenly and sharply as he suddenly did—to sit on the cusp of losing everything, and to feel that loss so acutely in the disappearance of the map they’d each put so much of themselves into. But as he stared down to where Sirius flinched, rocking on the balls of his feet in a thoroughly un-Sirius manner, he realized the other boy was just as upset. 

And it hit him suddenly, the way he imagined being thwacked with a bludger would feel (having never been within fifteen feet of a bludger, he really had no idea.) That they were all together in this fear of the future, in this sense of loss. That Hogwarts belonged to all of them, not just the Marauders, but to every witch and wizard that ever laughed and cursed and sang and yelled down its corridors. It belonged to him, and it belonged to everyone. 

That there were things to be lost, yes, but that there also might be things to be gained. That the Marauders were held together with more than fear, but with friendship and loyalty and romance and jokes and fights and blood and saliva and secrets and lies and all of the things that stitch people together so firmly throughout their lives, the good and the bad. 

That Sirius was just as scared and lost as he was, though the boy hid it with his quick bravado and constant swagger. 

Those thoughts flew through his mind so quickly, he scarcely knew he’d had an epiphany. He only knew he didn’t want to strike Sirius anymore; he wanted to embrace him instead, because the loss of the map had somehow put his fear into perspective. 

He reached out his hand slowly, and Sirius flinched as if he still expected the deserved smack, but instead Remus rested it on the curve of his cheek and forced the boy to look up into his eyes. 

“I think, maybe, that was supposed to happen.” 

“Who are you, and what trunk have you stuffed Moony in?” Sirius asked weakly. 

Remus laughed. Because it didn’t seem that Sirius was going to straighten from his frustrating kneeling position, he chose instead to slip down from his desk chair to the floor as well, crossing his legs together and tenting his fingers in front of his face. He liked to speak precisely, even poetically, when given the opportunity--and he could preconceive the importance of this moment. 

“I just think… We worked so hard on that map, and we put so much of ourselves into the parchment and the ink… That it seems fitting that it stays here, somehow. Like we’re physically leaving our legacy behind, a little part of ourselves.” 

“But it’s in a file cabinet, Moony! Filch’s filing cabinet!” 

“But it’s a little piece of Marauder history. It’s made up of Marauder spirit. How long do you think it’ll stay cooped up?” 

Sirius paused, considering this. Though he wasn’t nodding in agreement, he’d at least stopped rocking back and forth. 

“It’ll get out, Sirius. It’ll help another group of mischief makers. It would have been wrong to bring it out of the castle, I think. It’s like… it’s like our love note to Hogwarts.” 

And finally, Sirius smiled, as quick and bright as the final slant of evening sunlight warming Remus’s neglected desk. And how could Remus ever again resist leaning in to those curving lips, pressing his own over them? Sirius found his hands and twenty fingers twined together as they kissed, washed squarely in the angles of orange sunset that came through the window. 

Remus tried to put a lot of things into that kiss. Things they didn’t talk about, like fear and love. Things they did talk about, inside jokes and vague future plans. His gratitude that Sirius had said, offhand, a week ago at breakfast, that they might consider getting a flat together. His exhilaration, still, at the ability to touch Sirius, to kiss him, to in some small way call him his own. His acceptance, that Sirius would not understand all of these things. That to him, this was just another kiss—maybe shaded with other emotions, given a new hue based on the situation. That maybe Sirius didn’t need to know every little thing in Remus’s head to really understand. 

Because in that moment, everything was okay. Everything had been okay, and everything would be okay. Remus felt this with young determination, with the sort of gravitational belief he felt physically in his chest. There was a glint of bright light on the windowpane as the sun finally slid under the horizon line and the grounds were washed in dark. And though he was no longer in view of the window, he could picture the grounds just as they always were by sunlight—vast and familiar, full of the promise of adventure, the sound of wind in the leaves, the smells of wet earth and water and grass and sun-warmed skin. All of the things that really mattered would not fade, not in important ways. Perhaps he couldn’t remember the exact curve of the G’s on the map, or the width of the inked lines around the charms corridor, but he could recall what the map stood for, what their efforts signified, what their very existence at this school somehow signified. 

That things were important, worth remembering, worth fighting for. That he would remember these instances, and fight for more of them, because there were moments of bright sunlight and their were moments of darkness, and there was the setting sun in between that washed everything in that slow orange transitional light that always seemed, to him, to comfort in its warmth: to glow soft with the promise that it would return the next morning and start the day’s cycle all over again. -end-


End file.
